NOV  13  1918 


BM  565  .R5  1918 
Ridgley,  Frank  Harris. 
Jewish  ethical  idealism 


V 


JEWISH  ETHICAL 
IDEALISM 


By 


FRANK  H.   RIDGLEY 

Professor  of  Herbrezv,  0.   T.  Literature  and 

Exegesis,  in  the  Presbyterian  Theological 

Seminary,  Omaha,  Nebraska. 


BOSTON 

THE  GORHAM  PRESS 

MCMXMII 


Copyright  1918,  by  Frank  H.  Ridgley 
All  Rights  Reserved 


Made  in  the  United  States  of  Amtrica 
The  Gorham  Press,  Boston,  U.  S.  A. 


PREFACE 

THE  following  study  is  the  result  of  researches 
pursued  in  connection  with  the  preparation 
of  a  thesis  upon  the  same  subject  presented 
to  the  Faculty  of  the  Graduate  School  of  the 
University  of  Pennsylvania  in  partial  fulfilment 
of  the  requirements  for  the  degree  of  Ph.  D.  The 
full  thesis  is  now  in  the  possession  of  the  Uni- 
versity of  Pennsylvania,  and  may  be  consulted  in 
manuscript  form  through  its  Library.  In  this 
thesis  will  be  found  much  of  the  merely  intro- 
ductory material  underlying  the  present  study, 
and  there  will  also  be  found  indicated,  more  fully 
than  seems  justified  in  this  less  technical  and  more 
compact  presentation  of  the  theme,  the  depend- 
ence of  the  author  upon  the  wide  range  of  litera- 
ture touching  upon  the  fields  investigated.  I 
have  thought  it  sufficient  to  indicate  in  a  list  the 
more  important  and  the  more  easily  available 
literature  upon  the  historical,  literary,  exegetical 
and  critical  problems  involved.  Apart  from  these 
elements  of  form,  however,  I  present  here  my 
original  thesis  in  its  full  force  and  essential  con- 
tent. 

My  interest  in  the  problems  of  Old  Testament 
literary  and  religious  history  has  steadily  increased 
under  the  demands  laid  upon  the  teacher  of  the 
Old    Testament,    in    attempting    to    make    the 


4  Preface 

message  of  the  ancient  Hebrew  literature  a  vital 
factor  in  a  present-day  interpretation  of  Chris- 
tianity. Past  is  the  day  when  the  Theological 
Seminary  can  look  upon  its  chair  of  Old  Testa- 
ment exegesis  as  but  one  of  the  storage  houses 
from  which  may  be  drawn  well  selected  texts 
expounded  to  meet  the  demands  of  its  systemof 
theology.  Old  Testament  exegesis  must  justify 
itself  by  bringing  the  message  of  Hebrew  history 
and  prophecy,  of  Jewish  sacrifice  and  ritual,^  into 
vital  relations  with  the  great  ethical  and  spiritual, 
as  well  as  religious  message  of  the  Prophet  of 
Galilee,  the  Christ  of  Calvary. 

I  cannot  refrain  from  acknowledging  rny  debt 
of  gratitude  to  my  friend  and  first  guide  into  the 
deeper  messages  of  the  Hebrew  Scriptures,  the 
Rev.  Professor  James  A.  Kelso,  Ph.  D.,  D.  D., 
now  President  of  the  Western  Theological  Sem- 
inary of  the  Presbyterian  Church,  at  Pittsburgh, 
but  to  me  ever  and  supremely  a  matchless  teacher 
and  a  true  scholar.  The  inspiration  thus  im- 
planted was  widened  and  deepened  by  two  other 
great  teachers  and  recognized  scholars.  Principal 
George  Adam  Smith,  of  Aberdeen,  but  late  of  Glas- 
gow, and  Professor  Rudolph  Kittel,  of  Leipzig. 
The  genial  personality  of  the  one  and  the  kindly 
interest  of  the  other  stamp  their  lectures  and  every 
word  of  their  gifted  and  trained  pens  with  untold 
force  upon  my  mind,  and  I  do  not  venture  to 
define  the  limits  of  their  influence  upon  my  own 
view  of  many  phases  of  Hebrew  prophecy  and 
history.     And  finally,  it  is  with  some  hesitation 


Preface  5 

but  yet  with  keen  appreciation  of  their  helpful 
sympathy  and  kindly  encouragement,  that  I  men- 
tion Professor  Morris  Jastrow,  Jr.,  Ph.  D.,  and 
assistant  Professor  James  A.  Montgomery,  Ph.  D., 
under  whose  direction  I  pursued  my  special 
studies  in  Old  Testament  religion  and  literature  at 
the  University  of  Pennsylvania.  Their  peculiar 
authority  in  their  special  fields,  and  their  com- 
mon interest  in  the  great  religious  movement 
herein  surveyed  in  its  development  and  its  cul- 
mination in  the  message  and  mission  of  Jesus, 
have  been  a  constant  inspiration  to  me,  and  again 
I  must  thank  them  for  unmeasured  contributions 
to  my  understanding  of  the  history  of  the  Hebrew 
people  and  their  religion,  at  the  same  time  assum- 
ing entire  responsibiUty  for  the  form  and  issue  of 
the  thesis  herein  maintained.  Nor  am  I  forgetting 
the  kindly  incentive  of  the  genial  enthusiasm  of 
Professor  Albert  T.  Clay,  of  Yale,  but  formerly  of 
the  University  of  Pennsylvania. 

I  stand  therefore  between  these  trained  and 
inspiring  masters  and  my  own  students,  urged  on 
by  both  influences  to  seek  the  deep  currents  of 
divine  revelation  running  through  the  history  of 
the  ancient  Hebrew  and  the  post-exilic  Jew,  God's 
preparation  for  the  message  and  mission  of  the 
Prophet  of  Nazareth — a  revelation  which  was  not 
that  Christ  indeed,  but  which  was  none  the  less  the 
fore-runner  of  the  Christ.  How  the  Law  related 
itself  to  the  message  of  the  Prophet  in  this  pre- 
paratory period  is  the  problem  before  us.  That 
the  former  interpreted  and  preserved  the  latter 


6  Preface 

is  the  burden  of  our  conclusion.  That  the  whole 
study  may  prove  to  any  who  follow  it  an  incentive 
to  reread  the  Old  Testament  in  terms  of  a  move- 
ment divinely  inspired  to  prepare  the  way  for  the 
supreme  expression  of  God  in  human  life  and 
thought  through  Jesus  Christ  and  his  Gospel,  is 
the  aim  and  sufficient  reward  of  the  labors  there- 
into wrought. 

Frank  H.  Ridgley 
Omaha,  Neb.. 
June  /,  igiS. 


CONTENTS 
Chapter  Page 

Introduction .  9 

I     Hebrew  Prophecy 13 

The  Full  Tide  of  Hebrew  Prophecy  14 

The  Great  Concepts  of  the  Prophets  2 1 

n     The  Deuteronomic  Reformation 26 

Preparation  for  Deuteronomy 28 

Deuteronomy 31 

Immediate  Influence  of  Deuteronomy  36 

III  The  Post-Reformation  Movements...  41 

Growing  Legalism 42 

Prophetic  Reaction 45 

Priestly  Syncretism 54 

Summary     of     Post-Reformation 

Movements 58 

IV  Post-Exilic  Priestly  Reconstruction...  61 

Exilic  Influences 61 

Conditions  in  Jerusalem 67 

The  Priestly  Reconstruction 69 

Summary 72 

V    The  Law  Vindicated 76 

The  Prophetic  Struggle ']'] 

The  Exile  and  Restoration 79 

Israel  under  the  Law 81 

The  Resultant 84 

Bibliography 89 

Index = . .  93 


^  DEDICATION 


TO    MY    FATHER   AND    MOTHER 

Cherished  memories  of  a  long  sainted 
Father's  love  for  the  Old  Book, 
And  the  abiding  inspiration  of  a 
Mother's  faith  in  its  message, 
Are  firm  foundations 
Undisturbed  by  life's  trial 
Or  critic's  proof. 


INTRODUCTION 

A  study  of  the  religious  history  of  Israel  shows 
that  the  relation  between  the  ritual  legalism 
of  the  Priests  and  the  ethical  Idealism  of  the 
Prophets  Is  not  that  of  an  absolute  contrast, 
but  rather  that  of  an  Inevitable  and  almost  Im- 
perative development.  Ethical  Idealism  never 
freed  Itself  wholly  from  practical  legalism,  nor 
does  legalism  necessarily  exclude  ethical  piety, 
for  legalism  may  easily  subordinate  the  ritual  to 
the  ethical.  It  is  this  ethical  idealism  of  the 
Jewish  reconstruction  which  revealed  it  to  be  the 
expression  of  Hebrew  Prophecy.  The  prophets 
but  vaguely  touched  upon  the  relation  of  true 
religion  to  Its  outward  manifestation  in  the  Cult. 
What  they  had  left  undone,  the  law  attempted  to 
do.  It  became  the  mediator  between  the  high 
ideals  of  the  prophets  and  the  practical  problems 
of  the  priests.  It  reveals  God  to  man,  and  en- 
ables man  to  attain  unto  God. 

In  developing  a  discussion  of  the  relation  of  the 
completed  ritual  system  of  the  post-exilic  com- 
munity to  the  spiritual  concepts  of  the  prophets 
we  can  begin  at  no  better  point  than  that  of  the 
state  of  religion  among  the  Hebrews  at  the  period 
of  the  finding  of  the  Book  of  the  Law  in  the 
Temple  at  Jerusalem,  during  the  reign  of  Joslah. 
Three  currents  of  Influence  unite  in  various  pro- 


lO  Introduction 


portions  to  form  the  stream  of  religious  life  which 
marked  this  period.  As  a  background  to  any 
deeper  and  richer  elements  were  to  be  found  the 
common  rites  and  traditions  belonging  to  the 
great  Semitic  stock  from  which  the  Hebrews  had 
come.  As  a  distinctive  possession,  however,  the 
Hebrews  inherited  the  traditions  and  religious 
customs  and  ideals  connected  with  the  worship 
of  Yahweh,  the  God  of  Moses.  But  permeating 
this  whole  fabric  were  the  influences,  both  ideals 
and  institutions,  borrowed  from  their  Canaanite 
neighbors.  We  find,  then,  the  basal  concepts  of 
sacrifice,  with  its  altars  and  its  priests,  with  its 
feasts  and  its  ceremonials,  all  shot  through  by 
the  lofty  concept  of  a  covenant  God,  bound  to 
his  people  by  ethical  bonds.  But  human  nature 
has  its  universal  elements,  and  Semitic  culture  has 
its  racial  tendencies,  and  Yahweh  worship  was 
set  in  conflict  with  human  weakness  clothed  in 
ancient  Semitic  traditions  and  new  Canaanite 
environments.  Many  altars  threatened  the  unity 
of  God,  ashera  and  pillars  materialized  the  con- 
cept of  deity,  and  joyous  festivals  of  seed-time 
and  harvest,  of  springing  life  and  ripening  fruits, 
all  threw  wide  open  doors  of  sensuality  and  cor- 
ruption. Thus  even  Yahweh  worship  could  not 
maintain  its  integrity  when  expressed  in  countless 
sanctuaries  and  under  the  shadow  of  the  sacred 
post  and  the  stone  pillar,  with  even  the  great 
sanctuary  at  Jerusalem  not  free  from  ministers  of 
impurity  and  emblems  of  pagan  origin.  It  is 
not  strange,  but  natural,  that  Israel  fell  a  victim 
to  the  lower  elements  of  Canaanite  religious  cus- 
tom. 


JEWISH  ETHICAT.  IDEALISM 


JEWISH  ETHICAL  IDEALISM 

CHAPTER  I 

Hebrew  Prophecy 

THE  ethical  weakness  found  in  the  heathen 
rites  of  the   Canaanites   and   in   the  lower 
elements  of  the  popular  religion  of  Israel, 
gave  rise  to  the  greatest  movement  in  all  human 
history.     It  is    impossible   to  over-estimate    the 
importance  of  Hebrew  Prophecy. 

While  we  recognize  the  spirit  of  prophecy  as 
manifest  from  the  beginning  of  Hebrew  history  in 
the    personality    of    men    of   God,    seers,    whose 
character  and  calling  gave  them  special  insight 
into  the  divine  purposes  and  activities,  there  is  a 
real  sense  in  which  Hebrew  prophecy  belongs  to 
the  closing  century  of  the  joint  kingdoms.     This 
movement  is  recognized  to  have  had  its  rise  in  the 
days  of  Samuel.     Around   this   ancient   seer  we 
see  gathered  companies  of  religious  enthusiasts, 
'prophets'   uttering  divine  oracles.     These   'pro- 
phets' we  have  reasons  for  regarding  as  adapted 
from  Canaanite  usage.     While  the  true  Hebrew 
prophet  is  not  a  mere  member  of  a  class  of  orac- 
ular seers  or  enthusiastic    proclaimers  of   divine 
purposes,  but  a  specially  gifted  individual  who  has 
vitally   touched    the    movement   of   Hebrew    re- 
ligious thought,  yet  there  is  in  later  prophecy  a 
blending  of  elements  drawn  from  two  sources,  the 
13 


14  Jewish  Ethical  Idealism 

relatively  native  seer  and  the  Canaanite  prophet. 
In  the  prophetic  companies  of  which  we  find  a 
Samuel,  an  Elijah  or  an  EHsha,  a  leader  but  not 
a  member,  the  old  religious  inspiration  of  the 
seer  is  laying  hold  upon  these  bands  of  enthusiasts 
and  adapting  them  to  the  interests  of  the  Yahweh 
worship.  This  seizing  of  the  prophetic  guilds, 
bands  of  enthusiasts  in  moments  of  national  and 
political  crisis,  by  the  spirit  of  the  man  of  God,  the 
seer  of  old,  is  not  without  significance.  It  sug- 
gests that  in  later  prophecy  a  new  element  is 
added,  or  a  latent  element  is  emphasized.  The 
prophet  becomes  not  merely  a  diviner,  opening 
up  the  purposes  of  God,  but  an  interpreter  of 
God's  purposes  in  the  national  history.  He 
becomes  the  expression  of  the  national  spirit, 
filled  with  deep  religious  enthusiasm  for  the  wel- 
fare of  the  nation. 

The  Full  Tide  of  Hebrew  Prophecy 

The  full  tide  of  Hebrew  prophecy  is  to  be 
found  in  the  work  of  the  writing  prophets  whose 
literary  remains  have  come  down  to  us.  Al- 
though these  men  wrote  during  a  period  of  more 
than  three  hundred  years,  the  stream  of  their 
literary  art  and  religious  inspiration  rises  to  the 
flood  at  once,  and  in  three  great  names,  Amos, 
Hosea,  and  Isaiah,  we  have  the  highest  types  of 
Hebrew  religious  art  and  influence.  A  Jeremiah 
has  a  further  message,  an  Ezekiel  has  a  mission, 
and  the  post-exilic  prophets  meet  the  needs  of 


Hebrew  Prophecy  15 

their  day,  but  all  these  merely  build  upon  the 
foundation  which  had  been  laid  in  the  last  half 
of  the  eighth  century.  It  was  a  wonderful  im- 
pulse, and  the  eighth  century  prophets  have 
made  an  impress  upon  religious  thought  such  as 
no  other  force  until  the  teachings  of  the  Galilean 
Prophet  began  to  transform  the  modern  world. 
Suddenly  Amos,  a  herdsman  of  Tekoa,  appears 
in  the  streets  of  Bethel.  In  that  lonely  shepherd 
in  the  streets  of  the  national  sanctuary  we  see 
the  greatest  figure  in  the  Northern  Kingdom. 
Jeroboam,  with  all  his  splendor,  only  serves  to 
date  the  coming  of  this  humble  man  from  the 
Judean  hills.  The  key  to  the  importance  of  the 
message  of  Amos  lies  in  a  "therefore,"  with  its 
unheard-of  sequence  of  cause  and  effect.  In  the 
words,  "You  only  have  I  known  of  all  the  families 
of  the  earth;  therefore  I  will  visit  upon  you  all  your 
iniquities,"  Amos  announces  a  message  of 
judgment,  not  upon  the  enemies  of  the  people  of 
Yahweh,  but  upon  the  people  whom  Yahweh 
himself  had  chosen.  Herein  lies  the  great  step 
taken  by  the  Hebrew  prophet.  Its  significance 
is  found  in  the  popular  and  widely  accepted  re- 
ligious ideas  current  in  Israel,  not  only  among  the 
cruder,  superstitious  people,  but  even  among  the 
princes  and  leaders.  The  establishment  of  the 
nation  under  the  direction  of  Samuel,  the  tradi- 
tions concerning  David  and  Solomon,  popular 
interpretation  of  the  work  of  Elijah  against  the 
foreign  cult  of  Baal,  all  these  things  blended  into  a 
confident  religious  faith  in  Yahweh  as  the  covenant 


1 6  Jewish  Ethical  Idealism 

God  of  Israel,  bound  to  his  people  by  natural 
bonds,  no  more  to  be  broken  than  those  binding 
Kemosh  with  Moab.  Already  in  Amos'  day 
Assyria  was  looming  high  over  the  eastern  hori- 
zon. Could  Israel  escape  the  impending  disaster? 
What  will  Israel's  God  do  for  his  people?  The 
popular  faith,  doubtless  urged  on  by  the  popular 
prophetic  guilds  true  to  their  religious  patriotism, 
declared  that  he  would,  yea,  that  he  must  save 
his  people,  lest  he  perish  with  them.  But  Amos 
has  his  eyes  upon  the  sins  of  the  pampered  devo- 
tees at  the  sanctuar'es  of  Yahweh.  His  concept 
of  God  allows  of  no  fellowship  with  his  people. 
For  him,  Yahweh  is  God  of  right  as  ^vell  as  and 
more  truly  than  God  of  Israel.  It  Is  xMqlI  without 
significance  that  he  never  calls  Yahweh  God  of 
Israel.  Yahweh  acts  toward  Israel  under  a 
higher  law  than  that  of  natural  bonds  with  his 
people.  Amos  had  seen  Yahweh  in  the  neigh- 
boring peoples,  and  in  the  approaching  power  of 
Assyria.  His  sway  broadens  beyond  the  range 
of  the  land  of  Israel,  his  power  reaches  beyond 
the  hosts  of  Israel.  The  Lord  Yahweh  has  be- 
come to  him  the  God  of  nations,  the  Lord  of 
unlimited  forces,  the  God  of  Hosts.  It  was  a 
strange  message,  that  Yahweh  would  smite  his 
own  people.  But  when  Amos  learned  that  Yah- 
weh was  Lord  of  Assyria  as  well  as  Israel,  he  could 
read  Israel's  fate  In  a  new  light.  In  Israel's 
defeat  he  could  see  the  victory  of  the  righteous- 
ness of  the  God  of  Hosts.  Thus  Amos  loosens 
the  bonds  which  bound  Yahweh  to  Israel  by  mere 


Hebrew  Prophecy  ij 

formal  kinship,  and  renewed  them  in  surer  fetters 
of  moral  affinity  and  formed  a  tie  which  held 
even  over  the  fall  of  Samaria,  and  ultimately 
over  the  period  of  the  exile.  The  only  God  of 
Israel,  whom  Elijah  had  proclaimed,  has  become 
the  powerful  God  of  Hosts,  the  Lord  of  princi- 
palities and  powers.  The  God  who  could  send 
Hazael  as  the  scourge  of  Israel  for  her  sin  in  the 
matter  of  Baal  is  sending  Assyria  to  destroy  her 
for  her  sin  at  Bethel.  The  latent  monotheism 
and  the  searching  ethical  conscience  are  becoming 
clearer. 

Even  to  Hosea,  the  blow  must  fall.  The  love 
of  God  is  intense,  his  pleadings  with  Israel  are 
tender,  yea,  he  has  drawn  her  back  again  and 
again.  But  the  sterner  side  of  love  must  show 
itself.  Thus  Hosea  sums  up  his  message  with  the 
same  anomaly  as  Amos,  that  the  God  of  Israel  is 
against  his  people — because  of  their  sins.  For 
even  love  may  fail  in  the  face  of  rebellion,  and 
then  must  come  destruction.  Even  Yahweh  must 
face  the  fact:  "My  people  are  bent  on  backsliding 
from  me."  But  let  us  note  that  the  ethical 
message  of  Hosea  goes  one  step  further  than  that 
of  Amos.  Amos  had  made  clear  the  truth  that 
Yahweh  must  punish  his  own  people,  when  they 
continue  in  immorality.  But  Hosea  shows  that 
God  himself  suffers  in  striving  to  rescue  his  people 
from  their  sins  and  their  consequences.  Surely 
the  tender  strings  of  this  man's  heart  had  not 
been  so  rudely  touched  in  vain!  He  learned  and 
taught  that  the  sinned  against  bears  a  burden  as 


1 8  Jewish  Ethical  Idealism 

heavy  as  the  sinner — that  Divine  Love  yearns 
and  labors  over  the  wayward  child,  the  faithless 
one. 

If  Judah's  sin  is  the  fruit  of  a  false  idea  of  God, 
Isaiah  found  a  gospel  message  as  the  fruit  of  the 
impression  of  Yahweh  which  he  received  in  that 
vision  of  his  youth.  All  that  was  symbolized 
in  temple  worship,  all  that  is  revealed  in  human 
history,  bursts  upon  the  prophet  in  the  person  of 
Yahweh  of  Hosts.  Isaiah  was  a  disciple  of  the 
new  prophetic  movement.  To  him,  as  to  the 
earlier  prophets,  the  God  of  Israel  was  Yahweh  of 
Hosts,  and  to  him  the  majesty  of  his  sway  was 
most  clear.  By  a  strange  discipline  he  had  come 
to  realize  this  majesty  of  God,  not  from  the 
victorious  guidance  of  the  armies  of  Israel,  but 
through  the  solemn  lesson  of  the  fast  approaching 
and  inevitable  fall  of  his  nation,  and  the  prophet's 
faith  came  out  most  fully  at  the  hour  of  diasaster. 
The  God  of  popular  faith  must  vindicate  his  in- 
tegrity by  maintaining  the  cause  of  his  people, 
but  Yahweh  was  revealing  himself  in  the  moral 
reaction  of  his  nature  against  their  sin — a  reaction 
which  was  to  manifest  itself  in  their  fall.  We 
cannot  doubt  that  in  addition  to  the  moral  neces- 
sity which  had  impelled  the  prophet,  a  conscious- 
ness of  the  issue  of  the  advancing  power  of  Assyria 
helped  to  direct  the  prophet's  thought.  Yah- 
w^eh's  glory  filled  all  the  earth,  and  for  him  Assy- 
ria was  under  the  sway  of  Yahweh  of  Hosts.  It 
may  be  too  much  to  say  that  Isaiah  was  a  mono- 
theist  in  our  sense  of  the  term,  but  after  all  the 


Hebrew  Prophecy  19 

matter  is  so  largely  one  of  terms,  and  the  God  of 
his  temple  vision,  and  the  God  of  his  life-long 
message  is  beyond  all  compare  in  majesty,  be- 
yond all  limits  in  power,  and  even  Assyria  is  but 
an  instrument  in  his  hand  to  be  used  and  laid 
aside  at  his  will.  It  was  this  assurance,  so  different 
from  the  old  and  the  popular  faith  in  the  God  of 
battles,  which  sustained  Isaiah  and  which  he 
urged  upon  Ahaz  and  Hezekiah.  "The  only, 
yet  at  the  same  time  an  overwhelming,  counter- 
weight to  Assyria  was  not  political  nor  human; 
it  was  the  power  and  purpose  of  Yahweh. 
Not  man,  but  God,  determines  history — that  is 
the  keynote  to  Isaiah's  political  action  and  ad- 
vice; not  by  clever  alliances,  but  by  watching  for 
and  quietly  carrying  out  the  will  of  Yahweh  is 
the  true  welfare  of  the  state  to  be  secured." 
(Gray,  Is.,  Vol.  I.,  Ixxxi.)  And  thus  he  takes  an 
advance  stand  on  the  firm  ground  of  practical 
monotheism.  Yahweh  is  in  very  truth  the  God 
of  all  nations,  and  beyond  all  gods.  As  Smend 
says,  "He  even  called  Yahweh  Spirit  (31:3), 
that  is,  the  One  absolute  Agent,  besides  whom 
there      is     only     impotent     flesh."  (Smend, 

Alttestamentliche  Religions-Geschichte,  220.) 
Surely  there  is  nothing  left  but  the  formal 
statement  of  the  absolute  and  solitary  unity  of  the 
deity! 

We  need  only  mention  the  last  prophet  of  this 
period,  Micah,  the  Moreshtite,  a  man  unknown 
to  us  save  by  his  writings  and  a  message  which 
Jeremiah  says  he  delivered  in  the  days  of  Heze- 


20  Jewish  Ethical  Idealism 

kiah.  Prophesying  at  the  close  of  the  eighth 
century,  we  find  him  in  the  midst  of  the  same 
scenes  which  brought  forth  some  of  the  deepest 
of  Isaiah's  messages.  But,  while  Isaiah  was  a 
citizen  of  Jerusalem  and  a  member  of  the  aristo- 
cratic classes,  Micah  was  from  Moresheth,  "a 
small  town  in  the  maritime  plain  near  Gath." 
The  contrast  is  chiefly  revealed  in  the  point  of 
emphasis.  The  man  of  the  people,  familiar  with 
life  in  the  rural  districts  and  among  the  poorer 
classes  of  the  people,  Micah  saw  more  clearly 
even  than  Isaiah  the  oppression  on  the  part  of 
the  rich,  the  corruption  of  the  religious  and  moral 
leaders,  and  the  general  immorality  of  the  na- 
tional life. 

Thus,  in  the  face  of  a  great  moral  crisis  and  a 
sure  national  decline  with  its  approaching  foreign 
control,  the  prophet  utters  his  message  of  warning 
and  condemnation,  with  its  call  to  repentance, 
and  its  expressed  or  implied  word  of  hope.  Two 
notes  had  sounded  in  the  old  prophetic  guilds,  an 
awakened  patriotic  zeal  and  a  renewed  religious 
enthusiasm.  Two  notes  sounded  in  the  new- 
prophecy,  a  vital  moral  consciousness  and  a 
religious  patriotism.  In  the  earlier  period,  the 
patriotic  national  interest  had  a  dominating 
place,  in  the  later  period  it  was  distinctly  subor- 
dinate to  the  ethical  motive  and  the  religious 
interest.  The  prophets  laid  hold  upon  the  old 
covenant  bond  between  Yahweh  and  his  people, 
but  they  interpreted  it  in  a  moral  rather  than  in  a 
merely  formal  sense.     The  bond  was  one  of  moral 


Hebrew  Prophecy  21 

obligation,  with  mutual  responsibilities.  They 
felt  that  Yahweh  had  rejected  his  people,  because 
the  moral  and  religious  elements  had  outweighed 
the  national  interests.  It  was  this  very  habit  of 
Interpreting  all  events  in  terms  of  religion  which 
won  for  them  their  place  in  religious  history  and 
Israel  its  power  to  outlive  theexile.  On  the 
other  hand,  it  was  an  undue  emphasis  upon  the 
national  and  merely  political  elements  of  their 
message,  with  a  zealous  but  mistaken  and  mis- 
placed patriotism,  which  characterized  that  group 
of  leaders  whom  the  writing  prophets  oppose  as 
false  prophets.  Their  whole  point  of  view  cen- 
tered in  the  concept  of  Yahweh  as  the  God  of 
Israel,  bound  to  his  people  by  natural  bonds. 
Assuming  such  a  position,  the  prophet  Is  led  to 
take  a  false  ethical  stand  at  times,  presenting  the 
bright  side,  supporting  the  nation  In  Its  course 
even  when  that  course  may  be  false  and  Its  Issue 
destruction.  We  must  not  misjudge  these  men, 
but  only  recognize  the  limits  of  their  vision.  All 
were  not  false  men,  only  at  times  were  they  es- 
pecially corrupt.  Their  fallacy  lay  chiefly  In  the 
difference  of  emphasis  between  them  and  their 
opponents. 

The  Great  Concepts  of  the  Prophets 

Passing  from  this  phase  of  our  discussion,  let 
us  gather  up  some  of  the  great  concepts  of  the 
early  writing  prophets.  We  cannot  but  note 
that,  no  small  factor  in  the  development  of  the 


22  Jewish  Ethical  Idealism 


content  of  the  prophetic  consciousness  was  to  be 
found  in  the  rising  and  overwhelming  power  of 
Assyria.  With  the  native  instinct  that  Yahweh 
could  not  forsake  his  people,  even  in  the  face  of  a 
world  empire,  the  prophets  were  driven  to  a  higher 
concept  of  God.  Yahweh  thus  became  Lord  of 
nations,  and  into  his  hand  is  given  the  reins  of  an 
ever-widening  empire.  The  God  of  Israel  is 
shown  as  able  to  sway  as  an  instrument  of  his  own 
wrath  a  foreign  people,even  against  their  own  will. 
Here  we  have  all  the  essentials  of  a  conception 
of  Yahweh  as  the  sovereign  ruler  of  men  and 
nations. 

That  the  ethical  premise  is  the  basis  of  Hebrew 
prophecy  is  evident  on  every  page  of  its  message. 
Especially  is  this  true  of  the  eighth  century  pro- 
phets. This  gave  them  the  basis  for  their  'novel'  • 
interpretation  of  the  signs  of  the  times,  and  it 
caused  them  to  emphasize  the  much  neglected 
but  essential  moral  nature  of  the  covenant  re- 
lation between  Israel  and  Yahweh,  a  relation 
dependent  for  its  interpretation  upon  the  moral 
nature  of  God.  The  social  corruption  of  the 
people  gave  them  a  constant  text  for  a  call  to 
penitence,  and  a  firm  foundation  for  their  assur- 
ance of  the  fatal  issue  of  the  approaching  conflict 
with  the  outside  world-powers.  It  was  this 
reaching  down  of  the  religious  consciousness  into 
the  daily  moral  life  of  the  people,  their  judgments 
and  social  relations,  which  marked  the  power  of 
the  prophet's  message.  That  Israel's  call  carried 
with  it  a  duty  was  a  thought  upon  which  the 


Hebrew  Prophecy  23 

popular  mind  had  not  taken  hold.  But  that  was 
the  central  thought  of  the  prophetic  message,  and 
thus  the  prophet  ever  deepened  and  exalted  the 
ethical  being  of  God.  Even  the  anger  of  Yahweh 
loses  all  the  arbitrary  zeal  for  the  good  name  of 
his  people,  to  say  nothing  of  mere  capricious 
vexation  over  the  slights  of  men,  and  becomes 
always  ethically  pure.  God  and  his  ethical 
purity  are  made  the  central  factors  in  all  judg- 
ments of  men  and  events. 

We  hear  much  of  the  ethical  monotheism  of 
the  Hebrew  prophets,  and,  of  a  truth,  it  is  be- 
cause of  this  corner-stone  of  their  faith  that  the 
Hebrews  have  become  the  greatest  religious 
teachers  of  the  world.  Practical  monotheism 
as  revealed  in  Israel  means  the  recognition  of  two 
elements  in  the  nature  of  Yahweh,  his  sovereign 
majesty  and  his  matchless  and  unapproachable 
holiness.  The  great  message  of  the  scene  between 
Isaiah  and  Ahaz  is  that  the  concept  of  God  which 
calls  upon  men  to  trust  implicitly  his  sovereign 
and  holy  sway  in  the  affairs  of  men  and  nations  is 
the  only  true  one.  All  the  elements  of  One  God 
of  sovereign  might  and  universal  sway  lie  in  the 
prophet's  conception  of  Yahweh's  interference 
in  the  affairs  of  the  nations,  and  Yahweh  of  Hosts 
meant  in  practical  religious  influence  to  Amos  and 
his  successors  all  that  the  Yahweh  of  Jeremiah 
meant  to  him,  all  that  Jehovah  means  to  us. 
Without  defining  their  position,  these  men  were 
in  all  essentials,  and  virtually  influential  as, 
monotheists. 


24  Jewish  Ethical  Idealism 

Much  has  been  made  of  the  attitude  of  the 
early  prophets  to  the  cult,  the  extreme  of  critical 
scholarship  asserting  that  there  was  an  uncom- 
promising antagonism  between  the  prophetic 
message  and  the  cult.  It  is  doubtless  true  that 
the  great  spiritual  prophets  represented  in  our 
book  of  Jeremiah,  or  in  Deutero-Isaiah,  were 
striving  after  the  ideal  of  the  New  Covenant, 
wherein  God  is  seen  to  be  a  Spirit  to  be  worship- 
ped in  no  restricted  place  or  manner,  but  only  in 
spirit  and  truth.  But  with  the  early  prophets, 
the  practical  development  of  moral  and  religious 
consciousness  had  not  attained  that  height. 
Their  polemic  was  directed  against  the  cult  so 
far  as  it  gave  expression  to  grossly  materialistic 
conceptions  of  deity,  and  unethical  ideas  of  the 
divine  will  and  activity.  It  is  not  out  of  harmony 
with  the  prophetic  message  that  Isaiah  was 
followed  by  reforms  based  upon  the  newly  found 
Book  of  the  Law,  or  that  the  Priestly  Code  was 
accepted  as  the  highest  expression  of  Yahweh 
religion.  These  things  were  but  the  working 
out  of  latent  elements  in  and  behind  the  message 
of  the  prophets.  IMuch  of  Israel's  religion, 
inherited  from  common  Semitic  stock  and  aug- 
mented by  Canaanite  elements,  was  morally 
corrupt.  It  is  this  sensual  element  which  calls 
forth  the  prophet's  bitter  charge  against  the 
sacrificial  cult  of  his  people.  With  the  rite  comes 
the  concept  of  the  deity.  Israel  cannot  keep  her 
faith  and  life  pure  and  hold  fellowship  with  the 
neighboring   cults.     They   might   wrap   up    their 


Hebrew  Prophecy  25 

sacred  sites  with  garments  of  patriarchal  legends, 
but  still  the  pagan  features  show  through,  and  the 
immoral  influences  tell.  On  the  other  hand,  for 
the  prophet  there  was  a  sense  in  which  ritual  ob- 
servance must  be  a  practical  essential  of  religion. 
Observance  of  rites  was  a  form  of  obedience  to 
the  known  will  of  God,  and  obedience  is  no  mean 
moral  virtue.  This  was  the  position  of  the  post- 
exilic  community,  and  there  was  doubtless  a 
similar  attitude  in  popular  religion  In  the  days 
of  the  prophets,  and  the  prophets  themselves 
were  under  its  influence.  They  merely  sought  to 
recall  the  people  to  the  real  content  and  purpose 
of  public  worship.  All  of  which  shows  the  prophets 
to  have  been  in  a  somewhat  ambiguous  position. 
They  were  feeling  after  the  high  spirituality  which 
needs  no  material  forms  in  approach  to  the  deity, 
but  they  were  preaching  to  a  people  who  could 
only  think  in  terms  of  the  traditions  of  the  past. 
They  stood  between  the  Law,  the  great  School- 
master of  human  progress,  and  the  Gospel  as 
interpreted  by  Paul,  the  great  Liberator  of  the 
spirits  of  men.  It  was  the  legal  element  which 
won  the  day  in  Judah,  but  not  without  a  con- 
stant stream  of  prophetic  influences  stri\ing  with 
and  against  it. 


CHAPTER  II 
The  Deuteronomic  Reformation 

IN  our  Introduction,  we  showed  the  elements 
which  entered  into  the  popular  religion  at  the 
time  of  the  finding  of  the  Book  of  the  Law. 
First  were  those  coming  into  Israel's  religion 
through  its  common  inheritance  from  its  great 
Semitic  stock.  Into  this  mass  of  higher  and  lower 
elements  was  injected  all  that  is  meant  by  Yahweh 
worship,  with  its  great  principles  and  purer 
ordinances.  Upon  the  entrance  into  Canaan 
both  these  elements  were  modified  by  coming 
into  contact  with  the  Baal  cults  of  the  land,  and 
the  sensual  rites  of  their  neighbors.  While  this 
contact  must  have  tended  toward  a  certain  re- 
fining and  civilizing  of  the  crude  nomad  ele- 
ments of  the  people,  it  also  gave  vent  to  a  lower 
moral  life  than  that  of  the  simpler  plane  of  the 
Yahweh  faith.  Against  these  enervating  and 
demoralizing  forces  we  saw  the  prophets  con- 
tending. Meeting  the  great  social  and  political 
problems  of  their  day  with  all  the  vigor  of  vital 
religious  enthusiasm,  they  attacked  the  moral 
corruption  and  the  religious  formalism  with  stern 
judgment.  Reading  from  the  signs  of  their 
day  of  vast  political  movements  and  threatened 
social    upheavals,    they    asserted    the    universal 

26 


The  Deuteronomic  Reformation  27 

sway  of  Yahweh  and  the  moral  purity  of  his 
judgments.  Thus  he  assumes  a  place  of  unique 
power  and  authority  which  involves  the  great 
essentials  of  practical  monotheism.  Thus,  again, 
not  only  were  all  forms  of  idolatry  condemned, 
but  idolatrous  worship  of  Yahweh  came  under  the 
ban,  and  even  all  forms  of  Yahweh  worship  in 
so  far  as  they  tended  to  take  the  place  of  true 
moral  relations  with  the  Holy  One  of  Israel. 

But  this  prophetic  movement  was  not  esoteric, 
in  the  sense  of  being  aloof  from  the  great  social 
and  religious  life  of  the  people  among  whom  it 
arose,  and  we  are  not  disappointed  in  seeking 
practical  reforms  as  a  result  of  its  influence.  The 
most  distinctive  of  these  reforms  are  to  be  con- 
nected with  the  movement  which  culminated  in 
the  finding  of  the  Book  of  the  Law  in  the  temple 
In  the  days  of  Josiah.  This  movement  had  Its 
Inception  in  the  preaching  of  Isaiah  and  the  reign 
of  Hezeklah.  It  had  its  \  ictory  in  the  triumph  of 
the  message  of  Deuteronomy  as  carried  out  in 
the  reforms  of  Josiah.  It  has  Its  sifting  in  the 
crucible  of  Jeremiah's  deep  spirituality.  It  has  Its 
supreme  vindication  in  the  restoration  of  Israel 
under  Ezra  and  Nehemiah  and  the  adoption  of 
the  Priestly  Code  as  the  constitution  of  the 
Jewish  community.  It  has  Its  keenest  judgment 
in  the  two  great  commandments  of  the  Prophet 
of  Galilee  and  the  law  of  love  of  the  Apostle  to  the 
Gentiles, 


28  Jewish  Ethical  Idealism 

Preparation  for  Deuteronomy 

The  fall  of  Samaria  and  the  preaching  of  Isaiah 
led  Hezekiah  to  take  a  firm  stand  for  the  purity 
of  the  worship  of  Yahweh  and  the  sanctity  of  the 
temple  at  Jerusalem.  Whether  the  prophet's 
vision  was  thus  receiving  its  highest  fulfilment, 
we  may  well  call  into  question.  The  gross  reac- 
tion of  Manasseh  points  in  the  other  way,  but 
religious  progress  must  be  upon  the  foundation 
of  human  experience,  and  is  very  slow  and  often 
sorely  retardec^.  So  a  Deuteronomy  must  come 
before  a  Jeremiah  and  the  Babylonian  captivity, 
and  a  Priestly  Code  must  come  before  a  Jesus 
and  the  Roman  diaspora. 

The  work  of  Josiah  is  set  against  the  dark  back- 
ground of  the  religious  reaction  manifested  in  the 
days  of  Manasseh.  But  we  must  not  think  of 
this  age  as  an  irreligious  one,  but  rather  as  one 
of  frenzied  striving  after  a  true  basis  of  faith  and 
life.  So  far  as  the  record  goes,  the  court  ex- 
pression of  this  was  a  wholesale  commitment  to 
the  manifold  enticements  of  the  sensuous  and 
spectacular  rites  of  the  splendid  Assyrian  cults, 
and  the  familiar  ones  of  Canaan  and  Phoenicia. 
The  popular  religion  seems  to  have  been  an  un- 
reasoning syncretism  of  native  and  foreign  ele- 
ments, summed  up  in  the  question  asked  in  Mic.  6: 
6-7.  The  prophet  answered  this  question  with 
an  emphatic  denial,  but  to  the  people  there  seemed 
to  be  but  one  answer,  and  that  was,  Yes.  It  is 
no  stress  of  religious  psychology,   therefore,   to 


The  Deuteronomic  Reformation  29 

believe  that  the  impress  of  the  bloody  zeal  of  the 
days  of  Manasseh  was  a  potent  factor  In  changing 
the  emphasis  from  the  sacrifice  of  festal  commun- 
ion and  votive  dedication  to  that  of  bloody 
atonement.  A  growing  sense  of  sin  had  led  to 
the  putting  of  the  sense  of  atonement  into  the 
prominent  place  in  the  old  sacrificial  rites,  and 
no  element  lent  itself  to  the  purpose  more  readily 
than  life  itself  as  conveyed  in  the  poured-out 
blood.  And  thus  the  man  whose  name  is  scarcely 
mentioned  by  the  historian  save  as  the  embodi- 
ment of  all  that  is  opposed  to  Yahweh  worship, 
was  the  Indirect  means  of  charging  the  Hebrew 
ritual  system  with  the  message  of  salvation  from 
sin  through  atonement  made,  which  has  made 
It  the  great  evangelistic  message  of  the  world's 
history,  especially  as  interpreted  in  the  person 
of  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  whom  his  followers  have 
set  forth  as  the  Lamb  slain  from  the  foundation 
of  the  world  for  the  remission  of  sins.  "If  any 
man  sin,  we  have  an  advocate  with  the  Father, 
Jesus  Christ  the  righteous;  and  he  Is  the  propi- 
tiation for  our  sins,  and  not  for  ours  only,  but  also 
for  the  whole  world"  (I  John  2:1-2). 

Josiah  succeeded  to  the  evil  as  well  as  the  good 
of  the  reign  of  Manasseh,  and  It  was  his  mission 
to  strive  to  undo  some  of  the  evil.  Let  us  not 
forget  that  it  was  in  the  thirteenth  year  of  his 
reign,  and  yet  five  years  before  the  finding  of 
the  Book  of  the  Law,  that  Jeremiah  began  to 
prophecy.  It  is  hard  to  overstate  the  importance 
of  the  work  of  this  man,     G.  A.  Smith  has  said 


30  Jewish  Ethical  Idealism 

that  all    which   henceforth   was    dominant    and 
creative  in  the  history  of  Israel,  however  ancient 
its  sources,  was  recast  in  his  personal  experience, 
so  that  personal  piety  in  later  Israel  grew  out  of 
his  personal  struggles,  as  may  be  seen  In  many 
Psalms,  and  chiefly  In  that  great  prophetic  figure 
of  Deutero-Isaiah,  the  Suffering  Servant  of  Yah- 
weh — largely  painted  from  a  study  of  Jeremiah's 
life.     In  any  case,  we  may  recognize  none  greater 
under  the  old  covenant.     His  special  mission  was 
to  add  the  indivdual  note  to  the  idea  of  God  and 
his  relation  to  man.     Job  alone  had  asserted  more 
strenuously    his    own   personality    over    against 
God's.     Jeremiah  was  the  great  psycho-religious 
analyst  of  the  O.  T.     Sin  lies  In  the  heart,  which 
Is  desperately  wicked  and  fearfully  weak.     Re- 
form must  begin  there.  In  a  thorough  renewal  of 
all  the  springs  of  a  man's  nature — a  work  to  be 
undertaken  only  at  the  call  of  God  himself.     It  Is 
not  without  significance  that  even  in  his  earlier 
prophecies  Jeremiah  lays  special  emphasis  upon 
the  heart  in  the  religious  life.     The  great  prophet 
of  individual  religion  could  brook  no  reform  which 
was  merely  external.     His  prophetic  conservatism 
might  call  him  back  to  the  old  Yahweh  worship, 
but   not   In   formal   service.     For  Jeremiah   the 
deepest,  truest,  heart  reform  alone  could  avert 
the  impending  destruction.     It  was  because  he 
found  his  people  hard  and  obdurate,  like  brass 
and  Iron,  that  he  gave  them  up.     It  was  only  the 
faith  that  Yahweh  knew  the  heart  of  man  that 
could  sustain  the  prophet  in  these  dark  moments. 


The  Deuteronomic  Reformation  31 

When  we  consider  the  emphasis  which  these 
early  chapters  place  upon  the  condemnation  of 
Judah  for  her  sins  of  false  worship,  in  strange  god  s 
and  local  cults,  we  may  well  believe  that  Jeremi- 
ah's early  ministry  was  in  line  with  that  movement 
of  priestly  and  prophetic  thought  which  was  to 
culminate  in  the  reform  of  Josiah.  So,  while  we 
cannot  think  of  Jeremiah  as  involved  in  the  form- 
ing and  issuing  of  the  Book  of  the  Law,  we  may 
think  of  him  as  helping  to  form  that  atmosphere 
of  Yahweh  worship  and  moral  purity  in  which 
Josiah  received  his  impulse  toward  the  support 
of  the  truer  worship  of  Yahweh,  and  our  minds 
turn  to  the  opening  verses  of  the  eleventh  chapter, 
where  we  seem  to  see  the  prophet  grasping  at  the 
new  hope  offered  by  the  recently  revealed  cove- 
nant of  fidelity  to  the  Yahweh  of  Mount  Sinai. 
We  recognize  the  strong  opposition  to  the  accep- 
tance of  this  passage,  and  yet  its  spirit  is  in  no 
real  sense  out  of  harmony  with  the  attitude  of 
Jeremiah  at  the  time.  As  a  mortal  foe  of  the 
nature  cults,  opposed  by  D,  there  is  no  reason 
why  he  should  not  find  in  it  much  that  was  con- 
genial, even  if  he  had  had  no  active  part  in  its 
inception. 

Deuteronomy 

In  considering  all  those  movements  out  of 
which  the  reforms  of  Josiah  arose,  we  must  give 
first  place  to  the  Book  of  Deuteronomy.  Apart 
from    all    critical  questions    as    to  the  date  and 


32  Jezvish  Ethical  Idealism 

authorship  of  the  book,  the  account  in  Kings  of 
the  reform  of  Josiah  clearly  shows  that  it  was  de- 
pendent upon  the  book  of  Deuteronomy.  In 
itself  and  in  its  relations  to  the  great  critical 
problems  of  O.  T.  history,  it  stands  out  as  one  of 
the  great  literary  products  in  all  racial  and  re- 
ligious history. 

We  cannot  go  into  the  whole  problem  of  the 
date  and  authorship  of  Deuteronomy,  but  the 
explanation  of  the  religious  conditions  before 
and  after  the  reform  of  Josiah  involves  the  general 
outlines  of  the  critical  conclusion  that  Deuter- 
onomy was  the  product  of  the  movements  and 
religious  developments  which  led  to  the  reforms 
of  Josiah,  as  well  as  being  the  immediate  inspira- 
tion to  the  more  systematic  carrying  out  of  those 
reforms.  We  cannot  harmonize  its  central  doc- 
trine— the  one  place  of  acceptable  worship, — 
with  the  religious  history  prior  to  Josiah's  day, 
but  we  can  see  in  the  troubled  days  preceding 
Josiah  and  the  prophetic  message  before  Manasseh 
the  ground  out  of  which  it  could  have  sprung. 
It  comes  most  probably  as  a  reaction  against  the 
corruptions  of  Manasseh's  reign.  Thinking  men 
could  see  no  way  out  of  the  corruption  inherent 
in  the  popular  cults  and  aggravated  by  the  inno- 
vations of  Manasseh,  save  in  a  radical  revolution 
in  worship.  If  written  in  the  stormy  days  of 
Manasseh's  persecutions,  it  may  well  have  been 
concealed  in  the  temple  for  safe  keeping.  Dur- 
ing those  days  of  gross  corruption  of  Yahweh 
worship  and  open  adherence  to  pagan  cults,  the 


The  Deuteronomic  Reformation  33 

prophetic  party  and  the  pious  in  Israel  were  forced 
to  conceal  themselves,  but  this  concealment  only 
served  to  deepen  their  attachment  to  the  true 
worship  of  Yahweh.  The  closing  of  the  temple 
to  true  worshippers  of  Yahweh, — closed  because 
prostituted  to  foreign  worship, — did  not  crush 
out  the  deeper  spirituality  or  destroy  the  zeal 
for  the  established  rites.  They  did  learn  by  prac- 
tical experience  the  prophetic  truth,  that  it  was 
possible  to  hold  fellowship  with  Yahweh  apart 
from  outward  forms,  and  yet  they  yearned  for 
the  old  expressions  of  a  deepening  spirituality. 
Thus  a  blending  of  prophetic  spiritualism  and 
popular  worship  developed  a  code  of  practical  pro- 
cedure. This  was  D,  a  protest  against  the  syncre- 
tism of  Manasseh's  day,  a  practical  attempt  to 
apply  the  prophetic  principles  of  One  God,  to  be 
worshipped  in  spirit  and  truth. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  chief  emphasis 
of  the  book  lies  in  the  centralization  of  the  wor- 
ship at  one  authorized  sanctuary.  The  early 
Hebrew  walked  in  an  atmosphere  of  religious  ob- 
servance, and  acts  of  worship  might  be  rendered 
at  countless  places.  Thus  Israel  was  a  land  of 
many  altars,  and  varied  sacred  objects,  and  Yah- 
weh worship  was  rendered  at  many  places  and 
with  many  rites  and  symbols  adopted  and  adapt- 
ed from  local  Canaanite  cults.  It  was  this 
element  In  the  worship  at  the  local  sanctuaries 
which  became  obnoxious  to  the  spiritually 
minded,  and  the  subject  of  warning  on  the  part 
of  the  prophets.     It  was  not  hard  to  see  that  even 


34  Jewish  Ethical  Idealism 

Yahweh  worship  rendered  in  the  scenes  of  the 
traditional  nature  worship  and  through  symbols 
associated  wdth  heathen  and  often  grossly  sensual 
cults,  could  not  maintain  itself  in  purity.  And 
again,  the  Yahweh  of  Bethel,  and  Dan,  of  Shiloh 
and  of  Jerusalem,  would  easily  break  up  in  the 
popular  mind  into  distinct  personalities,  and 
even  'Yahweh'  became  the  collective  term  for 
many  gods.  Men's  minds  were  confused  by  al- 
tars many — yea,  Yahwehs  many.  In  D  we  find 
the  effort  to  solve  in  terms  of  practical  religion 
this  great  spiritual  problem,  an  effort  of  the 
prophet  and  the  priest  to  meet  in  a  solution  of 
the  great  religious  problem  which  the  people 
faced,  especially  in  the  light  of  the  trying  days 
just  passed, — the  days  of  Manasseh. 

With  the  thought  of  one  legitimate  place  of 
worship  there  goes  the  thought  of  one  group 
of  ministers  at  that  sanctuary.  Formerly  each 
household  as  well  as  each  community  could  have 
its  altar.  Any  man,  especially  the  head  of  the 
house,  could  offer  sacrifice  as  acceptably  as  the 
specially  appointed  or  prepared  functionary. 
There  were  central  sanctuaries,  there  were  recog- 
nized priests,  but  true  worship  was  not  limited 
to  either.  The  whole  family  and  communal  life 
was  permeated  with  the  religious  impulse,  and 
centered  about  the  family  altar  and  the  village 
high  place.  At  one  stroke  D  transforms  the  whole 
scene.  The  family  altar  is  no  more,  and  the  local 
sanctuary  is  gone.  The  priest-father  and  the 
village  priest  disappear.     In  their  stead  are  the 


The  Deuteronomic  Reformation  35 

altar  at  Jerusalem  and  Its  Levitical  priesthood. 
We  may  think  of  the  early  Levites,  not  as  poor 
local  ministers,  but  as  wandering  religious  enthu- 
siasts and  priestly  mendicants.  They  attached 
themselves  to  the  local  sanctuaries,  and  were  de- 
pendent upon  them  for  support.  All  this  D 
changed.  It  not  only  removed  the  sacerdotal 
privilege  from  the  head  of  the  house  to  the  Levite, 
but  it  thereby  established  a  privileged  class  in 
the  community.  D  restricted  the  legitimate  wor- 
ship to  one  sanctuary,  and  limited  the  priestly 
functions  to  one  group  of  ministers.  The  natural 
result  was  that  these  ministers  at  the  sole  temple 
of  Yahweh  recognized  by  this  written  code  of 
prophetic  inspiration  became  the  exclusive  cus- 
todians of  the  ceremonial  and  ritual  traditions 
and  the  priestly  functions  of  the  Yahweh  cult. 
The  longest  step  toward  P  had  been  taken. 

But  we  must  not  leave  D  with  the  thought  that 
it  was  a  mere  legalizing  of  prophetic  doctrines. 
Of  vastly  more  importance  was  its  mission  as  a 
refiner  and  moralizer  of  the  popular  religious 
expression.  It  was  this  tone  which  won  for  it  its 
matchless  influence  in  the  days  of  Josiah,  it  was 
this  which  stamps  its  thought  and  language  upon 
the  pages  of  Jeremiah's  prophecy,  it  was  this  which 
made  it  the  book  of  instruction  and  inspiration  for 
the  Prophet  of  Nazareth.  Religious  conscious- 
ness has  never  reached  higher  than  the  thought: 
"Hear,  O  Israel:  Jehovah  our  God  is  one  Jehovah 
and  thou  shalt  love  Jehovah  thy  God  with  all 
thy  heart,  and  with  all  thy  soul,  and  with  all  thy 


36  Jewish  Ethical  Idealism 

might."  It  is  no  wonder,  then,  that  it  took,  to 
use  the  thought  of  G.  A.  Smith,  the  profoundest 
reHgious  genius  of  their  age  to  see  its  defects. 
And  even  Jeremiah's  judgment  fell  not  so  much 
upon  the  Deuteronomic  code,  as  upon  its  inter- 
pretation by  the  following  generation. 

Immediate  Influence  of  Deuteronomy 

The  reforms  of  Josiah  were  the  first  fruits  of 
this  book.  His  great  work  was  the  removal  of 
the  high  places.  When  he  began  his  active 
religious  life  by  repairing  the  temple,  he  showed 
his  heart  to  be  good  soil  for  D.  So,  when  he 
lights  upon  the  Book  of  the  Law,  he  plunges  into 
a  campaign  of  fulfilment  of  its  precepts  and  ideals. 
By  one  blow  he  struck  at  the  whole  system  of 
foreign  cults  by  destroying  all  the  high  places 
throughout  the  land.  This  was  "the  most  revo- 
lutionary act"  of  Josiah's  reform,  but  true  to  the 
distinctive  message  of  D  as  compared  with  the 
Code  of  the  Covenant.  This  movement  was  the 
carrying  out  of  a  covenant  entered  into  by  the 
king  and  the  people.  In  solemn  covenant  they  had 
pledged  themselves  to  the  high  ideals  demanded 
by  the  newly  discovered  book.  "And  all  the 
people  stood  to  the  covenant."  This  expression 
is  an  emphatic  one,  used  nowhere  else.  Curtis 
sums  up  the  whole  phrase  thus:  "kept  the  law;" 
and  Chronicles  merely  enlarges  upon  the  thought 
when  he  says:  "And  the  inhabitants  of  Jerusalem 
did  according  to  the  covenant  of  God,  the  God  of 


The  Deuteronomic  Reformation  37 

their  fathers. "  This  covenant  was  sealed  by 
the  observance  of  the  Passover.  Two  facts  are 
stated:  that  it  was  kept  at  Jerusalem  according  to 
the  book  of  the  covenant,  and  that  there  had  been 
none  like  it  since  the  time  of  the  Judges.  It  is 
impossible  to  speak  with  any  assurance  of  the 
passover  of  Josiah,  except  that  it  was  observed 
at  Jerusalem.  But  this  is  significant.  It  was 
meeting  the  crucial  demand  of  D.  It  was  the 
Deuteronomic  passover  that  Josiah  observed, 
and  we  do  not  wonder  that  it  surpassed  all  others. 
It  is  not  without  significance  that  this  is  the  only 
use  of  the  word  "passover"  apart  from  the  Hexa- 
teuch  before  the  book  of  Ezekiel.  Even  in 
Chronicles  there  are  but  two  passovers,  that  of 
Hezekiah  and  Josiah's.  Ignoring  the  serious 
question  of  the  historicity  of  the  one  assigned  to 
Hezekiah,  there  are  but  two  passovers  recorded 
from  that  of  the  children  of  Israel  on  entering 
Canaan  till  that  of  the  restored  community  after 
the  Babylonian  exile.  While  this  tends  to  prove 
the  purely  local  and  private  character  of  the 
earlier  passover  festival,  it  points  to  the  powerful 
domination  of  D  over  the  reform  movement  of 
Josiah,  and  the  outstanding  significance  of  this 
seal  to  their  covenant  upon  the  basis  of  the  new 
Law. 

The  results  of  the  acceptance  of  D  and  the 
operation  of  the  reforms  of  Josiah  may  be  summed 
up  in  a  few  points.  And  first  of  all,  it  regulated 
worship.  By  the  centralizing  of  the  cult  and 
the  regulating  of  the  worship  by  a  written  code, 


38  Jewish  Ethical  Idealism 

there  was  a  transformation  at  a  stroke  of  all 
religious  rites,  and  the  old  household  and  com- 
munal elements  were  removed.  As  the  code  in- 
volvek  the  appearing  at  Jerusalem  for  public 
worship,  the  distance  and  expense  must  have  led 
to  a  reducing  of  the  free-will  offerings  and  a 
limiting  of  the  seasons  of  worship  largely  to  the 
set  feasts,  which  were  exalted  at  the  expense  of 
the  private  and  spontaneous.  All  this  regulated 
worship  leads  to  a  special  emphasis  upon  the  ritual 
of  public  service.  Regulated  worship  tends  to 
preclude  voluntary,  non-ritualistic,  worship,  and 
formalism  becomes  immanent.  The  religion  of 
Judah  after  D  did  not  escape  this  influence,  as  we 
shall  see  by  Jeremiah's  protests  and  Ezekiel's 
symbolisms.  Once  more  the  old  state  so  ab- 
horrent to  the  prophet  threatens.  Holiness  be- 
comes the  attitude  of  the  body,  not  the  mind — 
external  not  internal — not  love  to  Yahweh,  as 
D  inetnded,  but  fidelity  to  his  ordinances,  as  P 
enjonls.  Thus  the  \  ery  goal  of  the  Deuteronomic 
movement  was  missed.  The  "Book  of  the  Law" 
becomes  the  guide  of  life.  In  it  was  found  a 
finished  and  authoritative  code  of  religious 
direction.  Here  we  have  for  the  first  time 
"Holy  Scriptures,"  binding  on  all  for  all  time. 
We  cannot  forget  the  practical  value  of  these 
authoritative  Scriptures  in  the  preservation  of 
the  religious  community,  and  we  shall  see  that 
we  shall  have  to  add  rather  than  substract  P  from 
this  conserving  force.  But  popular  sentiment 
seized   upon    the    written    word    as    a    sufficient 


The  De liter onomic  Reformation  39 

touchstone  to  test  life  and  service,  and  the 
spiritual  leader  could  only  repeat  the  code  or 
suflFer  the  fate  of  a  Jeremiah  or  a  Jesus. 

In  looking  back  over  our  study  thus  far,  we 
find  we  have  traversed  some  interesting  ground, 
and  gathered  some  material  of  real  value  in 
meeting  our  larger  problem.  In  viewing  the 
popular  cults  of  pre-Deuteronomic  Israel,  we 
find  primitive  Semitic  and  crude  and  often 
sensual  Canaanite  elements  blending  with  the 
higher  Yahweh  ideals — 'producing  a  syncretism 
ever  tending  toward  the  side  of  heathenism  and 
sensuality,  and  culminating  in  the  extravagant 
eclecticism  of  Manasseh's  reaction.  Against 
these  crude  and  immoral  elements  the  prophets 
raise  their  voices,  holding  up  Yahweh  as  the  one 
God  of  Israel,  appearing  in  growing  clearness  of 
ethical  purity  and  sovereign  sway,  until  he 
reaches  his  height  in  the  Holy  One  of  Israel,  the 
Lord  Yahweh  of  Hosts,  of  Isaiah's  message. 
But  foreign  dominance  and  the  corruption  of 
worldly  prosperity  bring  forth  fruit  in  an  official 
syncretism  of  Yahweh  traditions  and  pagan 
extravagances,  in  a  wild  frenzy  of  devotion 
to  outward  forms  and  the  suppression  of  the 
messengers  of  high  spirituality.  Forth  from  the 
persecution  and  corruption  there  bursts  a  match- 
less utterance,  blending  high  prophetic  ideals 
and  practical  priestly  precepts  into  one  supreme 
effort  to  stem  the  downward  tide  and  to  direct 
the  devoted  people.  The  spoken  word,  and  the 
popular  or  priestly   tradition,   give  way  to  the 


40  Jewish  Ethical  Idealism 

written  message  and  the  inspired  code.  A 
reformation  takes  place,  purifying  the  worship, 
centralizing  the  cult,  and  regulating  the  ritual. 
High  religious  ideals  and  pure  moral  precepts 
become  the  common  property  of  the  people. 
The  Book  of  the  Law  is  found.  But  with  a 
regulated  worship  and  a  centralized  cult  comes  a 
priestly  monopoly.  With  a  written  code  comes 
a  check  upon  spontaneity  and  spirituality.  The 
message  of  the  prophets  becomes  hardened  into 
a  ritual  code,  the  spirit  of  prophecy  passes  into 
the  dogma  of  inspiration,  and  Israel  becomes 
a  Church  with  a  Creed.  Thus  she  is  carried  over 
the  exile,  and  thus  she  is  prepared  to  cool  down 
into  the  rigid  mold  of  Judaism.  Prophetic  in- 
spiration has  become  ecclesiastical  dogmatism. 
Have  we  not  here  the  key  to  P's  influence  in 
Judaism.^ — or  perhaps  better,  have  we  not  here 
at  least  one  important  key.^* 


CHAPTER  III 

The  Post-Reformation  Movements     • 

THE  great  social  and  religious  movement  which 
centers  about  D  proved  to  be  one  of  the 
closing  scenes  of  the  tragedy  of  Hebrew 
history.  The  doom  which  it  was  intended  to 
forestall  was  only  held  back  a  moment,  and  in  35 
years  the  great  central  sanctuary,  the  temple  at 
Jerusalem,  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  Babylonians. 
For  70  years  Israel,  so  solemnly  taught  that  at 
that  place  which  Yahweh  had  chosen  there  alone 
could  men  offer  acceptable  service,  must  worship 
God  without  temple  or  appointed  sacrifice.  For 
nigh  unto  250  years  that  temple  had  stood  as 
the  chief  high  place  of  the  Hebrews  and  as  the 
royal  sanctuary  of  the  house  of  David.  During 
these  seven  generations  of  temple  worshippers 
and  priestly  ministers,  a  ritual  usage  and  sacri- 
ficial w^orship  developed  which  found  classical 
expression  in  D,  which  became  the  ideal  code  for 
the  closing  days  of  Hebrew  national  history. 
The  history  of  these  closing  days  is  full  of  in- 
terest, full  of  deep  import  in  the  development  of 
religion.  One  name  stands  out  in  special  splendor 
during  this  generation.  Jeremiah  began  his  work 
five  years  before  the  finding  of  the  Book  of  the 
Law,    and    he    stood    among    the    remnants    as 

41 


42  Jewish  Ethical  Idealism 

Jerusalem  lay  in  ruins  and  the  temple  lay  stripped 
of  its  treasures  and  reduced  to  ashes  and  charred 
heaps.  From  the  pen  of  this  martyr  to  the 
cause  of  his  doomed  people,  and  from  his  faithful 
companion  and  chronicler,  Baruch,  has  come 
to  us  a  vivid  picture  of  these  sad  scenes,  or,  may 
we  not  say  the  more  truly?  pen  sketches  of 
dramatic  scenes  and  striking  characters  of  this 
national  tragedy.  The  Post-Reformation  Move- 
ments are  among  the  most  vital  to  the  under- 
standing of  the  later  history  of  the  people  of 
Israel,  and  they  form  a  foundation  for  the  legalism 
of  Judaism  and  the  spirtuality  of  Christianity. 
Two  streams  flow  side  by  side,  blending  into 
practical  synthesis  of  official  religion,  diverging 
into  ever  widening  circles  in  personal  life  and 
far-reaching  eifects.  These  two  forces  are  the 
growing  legalism  and  the  prophetic  reaction. 

Growing   Legalism 

In  our  last  study  we  saw  that  the  introduction 
of  D  wrought  a  vast  change  in  the  Hebrew  con- 
ception of  the  Torah  and  its  place  in  the  religious 
life  of  Judah.  The  spontaneous  faith  and  de- 
votion of  an  Amos,  Hosea,  Isaiah,  or  a  Micah, 
did  help  to  inspire  the  authors  of  D,  and  gave 
impetus  to  Jeremiah's  first  messages.  But  D's 
code  and  Jeremiah's  call  to  repentance  bore  fruit 
among  the  leaders  and  their  easy-going  followers 
in  a  growing  legalism.  It  is  easy  to  trace  these 
influences  in  the  message  of  Jeremiah.     In  8:8 


The  Post-Reformation  Movements  43 


we  see  the  place  assumed  by  the  Torah  as  ex- 
pressed by  the  code  of  D.  CorniU  says  of  this 
verse,  "One  of  the  most  noteworthy  and  weighty 
verses  in  the  entire  book  of  Jeremiah.'  He 
regards  the  phrase  'the  law  of  Yahweh  as  the 
essential  one,  and  that  it  can  only  refer  to  a  de- 
finite written  book,  and  of  course  that  book  is  U. 
This  great  work  with  so  much  of  which  Jereniiah 
must  have  been  heartily  in  sympathy,  the  scribes 
had  made  a  falsehood  through  their  dependence 
upon  the  effective  working  of  the  letter  of  the 
law  Surely  we  find  Jeremiah  face  to  face  with 
the  deadening  effects  of  a  formal  dependence 
upon  a  written  codel  ^  c   a 

In  the  prominence  given  to  the  temple  we  hnd 
another  phase  of  this  growing  legalism.     We  may 
confine  ourselves  to  two  passages.     In  n:  1-12:1 3, 
we  have  what  purports  to  be  Jeremiah  s  attitude 
toward  the  covenant,  which  can  be  no  other  than 
that  of  D.     Having  received  an  explicit  command 
to  announce  the  word  of  Yahweh,  he  undertakes 
a  mission  to  the  cities  of  Judah  and  in  the  streets 
of  Jerusalem.     But  his  preaching  was  largely  in 
vain,  Judah  turns  to  her  idols.     In  an  abrupt 
change  of  attitude  at  verse  15,  the  prophet  seems 
to  grasp  all  the  emptiness  of  the  whole^  system 
of  legal  conformity,  and  he  bursts  forth  into  the 
passionate  charge,  "What  hath  my  beloved  to  do 
in  my  house,  seeing  she  hath  wrought  lewdness 
with  many,   and  the  holy  flesh  is  passed  from 
thee?  when  thou  doest  evil  then  thou  rejoicest. 
The  whole  passage  is  difficult,  and  the  15th  verse 


44  Jewish  Ethical  Idealism 

Is  doubtless  corrupt.  Cornill  argues  with  keen 
judgment  against  the  Jeremlan  authorship  and 
the  historical  accuracy  of  the  pictured  relation- 
ship of  Jeremiah  to  the  law.  Whether  we  accept 
his  conclusions  or  not,  the  Import  of  the  passage 
beginning  with  the  15th  verse  is  the  same.  Jere- 
miah finds  his  people  depending  upon  material 
offerings  to  avert  their  doom,  and  costly  sacrifices 
for  immunity  from  danger,  giving  no  heed  to  the 
deeper  moral  conditions.  And  what  is  obscurely 
revealed  here  Is  clearly  manifested  in  the  great 
prophecy  of  the  7th  chapter  and  its  corresponding 
Baruch  narrative  of  the  26th.  Blind  confidence 
in  the  temple  had  become  characteristic  of  the 
people,  and  they  pointed  to  its  massive  piles  as 
a  touch-stone  of  magic  virtue,  reciting  the  formu- 
la, "The  temple  of  Yahweh,  the  temple  of  Yah- 
weh,  (the  temple  of  Yahweh),  are  these."  The 
preaching  of  Isaiah,  pointing  to  the  security  of 
Jerusalem,  the  mount  of  the  Temple  of  Yahweh, 
and  the  blessing  of  D  upon  those  who  kept  the 
law,  have  become  a  dogma  of  formalism.  To 
Jeremiah  this  appeal  to  the  temple  was  "false" 
because  their  trust  In  It  was  false.  Verses  9-1 1 
picture  the  popular  and  formal  religious  attitude 
In  all  vividness,  and  the  key  to  the  whole  scene 
lies  In  the  lOth  verse,  and  the  heart  of  the  corrup- 
tion lies  in  an  'in  order  that.'  In  verse  lob  the 
word  Is  to  be  translated  with  Graf  (Cornill)  as 
'in  order  that'  (damit),  and  we  follow  Cornill 
who  quotes  with  approval  Graf's  statement  that 
they    made   their   offerings   in   order    that   they 


The  Post-Reformation  Movements  45 

might  continue  in  their  evil  ways.  We  have 
here  a  vivid  picture  of  a  conscious  or  unconscious, 
but  not  the  less  real,  dependence  upon  the  out- 
ward forms  and  legal  conformity  of  the  temple 
ritual  for  acceptance  with  Yahweh.  And,  as  if 
the  prophet  struggled  to  picture  the  extent  to 
which  they  had  gone  in  their  legalistic  dependence 
upon  the  temple  worship,  he  brands  the  temple 
as  a  den  or  cave  for  robbers  (violent  ones),  a 
hiding  place  to  which  they  may  resort  after  their 
deeds  of  violence. 

Prophetic   Reaction 

But  against  the  deadening  effects  of  the  great 
message  of  D  there  was  a  deeply  ethical  and 
spiritual  prophetic  reaction.  With  the  quick 
moral  judgment  of  their  predecessors,  Ezekiel  as 
well  as  Jeremiah  sees  the  sins  of  the  people,  and 
both  proclaim  the  call  to  the  ethical  concept  of 
divine  government  and  human  obligation.  With 
the  failure  of  the  sacrificial  code  comes  a  deepen- 
ing sense  of  sin,  heightened  importance  is  given 
to  the  individual,  and  all  hope  centers  in  the  re- 
newal of  the  heart. 

Against  all  the  growing  legalism  Jeremiah 
protests,  and  his  message  becomes  a  sorrowful 
announcement  of  the  rejection  of  the  nation. 
For  him  the  whole  social  and  religious  fabric  was 
resting  upon  a  false  foundation.  A  covenant 
relation  built  up  upon  a  temple  ritual  and  a 
written  code  could  not  bind  a  righteous  God  to  a 


46  Jewish  Ethical  Idealism 

corrupt  people.  In  striking  figures  and  solemn 
fulness  he  announces  the  rejection  of  his  heritage, 
even  the  dearly  beloved  of  his  soul.  A  true  sense 
of  historical  relations  leads  him  to  remind  his 
boasting  people  of  the  fate  of  the  ancient  sanc- 
tuary of  Shiloh,  with  its  sacred  ark.  There 
Yahweh  had  caused  his  name  to  dwell  at  the 
first.  With  it  were  associated  some  of  their  most 
sacred  traditions,  and  its  temple  had  all  the 
sanctity  of  the  resting  place  of  the  ancient  ark 
of  the  covenant.  Yet,  see,  has  God  spared  it? 
Will  he  spare  Jerusalem?  For  Isaiah,  it  is  true, 
the  sacred  associations  of  Mount  Zion  formed  an 
impassable  wall  against  the  forces  of  Assyria. 
But  for  Jeremiah,  Israel's  sin  had  broken  that 
barrier  down,  and  no  sacred  house  or  fulfilled 
ceremonial  can  stop  the  avenger  of  the  broken 
covenant  of  righteousness.  The  message  of 
the  Hebrew  prophet  ends  in  a  lamentation  over 
a  forsaken  people,  8:209:1.  Has  this  long  line 
of  inspired  teachers  failed  of  its  mission.'*  Has 
Hebrew  prophecy  issued  in  the  destruction  of 
the  people  of  God?  It  seems  so,  but  only  does 
it  seeyn  so.  Prophetic  idealism  must  needs  clothe 
itself  in  ritual  formalism  to  meet  times  which 
were  to  try  men's  souls,  and  D  was  the  beginning 
of  this  movement.  But  these  testing  times  had 
not  fully  come,  and  Jeremiah's  mission  was  to 
sound  forth  in  its  last  and  clearest  notes  the  old 
prophetic  ideal  of  moral  purity  and  spiritual 
worship.  In  him  the  true  Israel  watches  its  own 
death  struggles.     But  in  himself  lay  the  solution 


The  Post-Reformation  Movements  47 

of    the    dark    problem.     Not    compromise,    but 
greater  reality  was  his  final  message. 

Not   a   covenant   renewed   upon   the  basis   of 
written  law,  and  sealed  in  temple  ordinances,  but 
a  new  covenant  of  personal  relation  to  the  God  of 
righteousness,  this  is  the  height  of  the  prophetic 
reaction.     How  did  Jeremiah  attain  and  express 
this  truth  t     The  key  lies  in  his  sense  of  the  deeply 
seated  nature  of  sin.     We  have  already  noticed 
that  in  his  earlier  work  Jeremiah  sought  a  reform 
which  was  not  that  of  outward  conformity,  but 
inward,  for  their  sin  was  bitter,  reaching  into  their 
very   heart.     All   through   his   later  message  he 
makes  the  stubbornness  of  the  evil  heart  to  be  the 
source  of  all  sin.     It  is  because  man's  heart  de- 
parteth    from    Yahweh,    that    the    curse    falls. 
Israel's  sin  is  graven  upon  the  tablet  of  their 
heart  as  well  as  upon  the  horns  of  their  altars. 
This  sin  in  the  heart  is  not  concealed  from  God, 
for  it  is  he  who  tries  the  heart,  and  upon  that  inti- 
mate judgment  he  passes  sentence.     But  is  not 
this  heart  found  to  be  deceitful  and  desperately 
affected.^     Had  not  the  prophet's  search  for  the 
depth  of  sin  led  him  to  utter  hopelessness.^     A 
rejected  nation  and  a  deceitful  heart!     The  nation 
condemned  to  destruction,   and   the  heart — but 
here  Jeremiah  finds  his  solution.     Even  God  can- 
not destroy  one  righteous  heart.     Jeremiah  had 
no  problem  as  to  the  ethical  nature  of  Yahweh. 
For  him  it  was  an  axiom  of  faith  bearing  fruit 
in  a  most  powerful  personality,  whose  own  moral 
individuality  was  highly  developed.   In  Jeremiah, 


48  Jewish  Ethical  Idealism 

then,  enters  into  the  Hebrew  faith  the  note  of 
individuality.  Driven  by  the  hopelessness  of  his 
mission  and  the  opposition  of  his  countrymen, 
into  the  recesses  of  his  own  nature,  he  found  God 
there,  but  he  never  lost  himself  in  God.  He  re- 
fuses to  be  involved  in  the  guilt  of  his  people, 
and  even  bitterly  differentiates  himself  from  them 
in  rebellion  against  unjust  treatment  and  in 
curses  upon  his  enemies.  Nor  does  he  hesitate 
to  make  his  appeal  against  God  himself,  and  to 
contend  his  cause  with  him.  In  Jeremiah  we  see 
the  emancipation  of  the  individual  strongly 
emphasized,  even  against  God  himself,  avoiding 
both  the  old  oneness  of  the  people,  and  also  an 
irresponsible  absorption  into  God.  It  is  with 
such  a  soul  that  Yahweh  is  about  to  enter  into  a 
new  covenant,  31:31-34.  Now  a  new  conscience 
has  arisen  and  men  shall  know  that  each  suffers 
for  his  own  sin.  For  God  is  willing  to  enter  into 
a  new  Covenant,  sealed  in  the  old  Torah  written 
upon  the  tablets  of  the  heart,  and  then  each  shall 
know  for  himself  Yahweh  and  his  mercy.  We 
cannot  better  grasp  the  supreme  reach  of  Jere- 
miah's message  than  by  referring  to  Cornill's 
masterly  study.  Having  shown  that  there  is  no 
conflict  between  prophetic  and  Deuteronomic 
rehgion,  since  in  both  the  basis  is  one,  viz.,  the 
moral  law  of  Sinai,  he  emphasizes  that  the  dis- 
tinctly new  element  of  this  covenant  lies  in  its 
being  written  upon  the  heart.  The  seal  of  the 
new  relationship  lies  in  the  turning  to  Yahweh 
with  the  whole  heart,  that  is,  the  submitting  of  the 


The  Post-Reformation  Movements  49 

will  to  him  wholly.  The  old  law,  once  written 
on  cold  stone,  becomes  anew  the  covenant  bond, 
but  now  written  on  the  warm  flesh  of  the  heart. 
Not  by  nature  is  this  law  learned,  but  from  grace, 
for  the  heart  must  be  circumcised,  the  soil  must  be 
broken  up,  and  the  old  sins  which  'bear  witness 
against  us'  must  be  healed.  Thus  out  of  the 
bitterness  of  his  own  experience,  he  learns  and 
proclaims  a  message  of  deep  spiritual  hope. 
With  his  feet  firmly  planted  upon  the  ground 
and  his  heart  open  before  us  and  Yahweh,  he 
stands  between  Yahweh  and  his  people.  Out  of 
this  close  personal  contact  with  the  God  of  the 
ancient  covenant,  Jeremiah  was  able  to  see  over 
the  sins  and  rejection  of  his  people  into  a  future  of 
a  people  made  up  of  human  hearts,  purified  by 
God's  grace,  strengthened  by  his  presence,  and 
controlled  under  a  new  Covenant  by  the  ancient 
Law  of  Yahweh  written  in  their  hearts. 

Turning  to  Ezekiel,  we  find  a  keen  moral 
judgment  upon  the  social  evils  of  his  day,  with  a 
sense  of  sin  marked  for  its  emphasis  upon  the 
individual  and  its  expression  in  terms  of  moral 
obligation.  If  Jeremiah  met  his  problem  by 
appealing  to  the  individual,  Ezekiel  much  more 
so.  For  him  the  God  of  Israel  deals  with  the 
individual  apart  from  the  past  or  the  future. 
The  culmination  of  this  thought  is  in  36:24-29, 
one  of  the  most  remarkable  passages  in  the  O.  T. 
Here  we  have  the  evangel  of  the  O.  T.  in  terms 
almost  Pauline  in  their  insistence  upon  individual 
spiritual  relations  with  God.     As  with  Jeremiah, 


50  Jezvish  Ethical  Idealism 

an  essential  element  in  the  thought  of  Ezekiel  is 
the  Covenant,  in  fact  it  is  fundamental  to  his 
system,  more  fundamental  than  it  was  to  Jere- 
miah's message.  As  with  Jeremiah,  this  is  the 
one  covenant  which  bound  Yahweh  with  his 
people  from  the  beginning.  But,  while  Jere- 
miah's emphasis  is  upon  the  covenant  sealed 
upon  Horeb,  Ezekiel's  thought  goes  back  to  the 
separation  from  Egypt  and  the  divine  choice  with 
the  divine  oath.  It  will  be  noted  that  Jeremiah 
is  in  harmony  with  D  in  his  reference  to  Horeb, 
while  Ezekiel  goes  back  to  God's  revelation  of 
himself  as  "I  am  Yahweh."  The  frequent  re- 
petition of  this  expression,  over  80  times  in  the 
book  of  Ezekiel,  forms  a  keynote  to  his  conception 
of  the  covenant.  He  has  passed  over  the  wilder- 
ness experience  to  the  call  in  Egypt,  rooting  the 
covenant  relation  in  Yahweh's  gracious  revelation 
of  himself  through  Moses.  It  is  this  God  of 
covenant  grace,  revealed  in  the  history  of  his 
people,  who  works  together  all  things  for  his 
name's  sake.  Therefore,  while  he  thus  carries 
his  charge  of  rebellion  to  the  very  foundation  of 
the  nation,  and  can  recognize  no  good  time  in 
Israel's  history,  he  can  deliver  a  message  of  hope. 
That  blessing  which  should  have  been  theirs, 
they  have  forfeited  by  their  attitude  toward  the 
covenant,  but  that  does  not  prevent  Yahweh's 
fulfilHng  his  covenant.  That  old  covenant  of 
grace,  which  has  been  spurned  by  a  rebellious 
and  wayward  people,  is  never  forgotten  by  Yah- 
weh, and  now  the  prophet  sees  in  it  a  covenant  of 


The  Post-Reformation  Movements  51 

salvation,  and,  since  the  emphasis  is  now  upon 
God's  covenant  fidelity,  it  becomes  an  everlasting 
covenant.  Upon  this  faith  he  builds  his  hope  for 
the  future,  and  makes  his  plans  for  the  restora- 
tion. 

The  culmination  of  the  doctrine  of  salvation 
through  the  redemption  of  the  individual  lies  in 
the  great  Servant  of  Yahweh  passages  in  Deutero- 
Isaiah.  While  we  accept  the  essential  unity  of 
Is.  40-55,  we  must  look  upon  these  passages  as 
citations  as  it  were,  from  the  pen  of  another 
writer,  adapted  by  the  present  author  to  his  con- 
ception of  the  Servant.  So,  while  we  cannot 
understand  Dt.-Is.  apart  from  them,  it  is  possible 
and  of  real  value  to  seek  the  meaning  of  this 
picture  of  the  Servant  in  its  original  integrity. 
To  this  great  Character,  painted  by  a  seer  who 
was  uttering  the  inspired  ideals  of  the  heart  of  the 
exilic  period,  we  shall  now  turn.  In  this  short 
poem  of  less  than  30  verses  in  the  Massoretic 
text  (42:1-4;  49:1-6;  50:4-6;  52:13-53:12),  one  of 
the  greatest  messages  of  the  O.  T.  is  found. 
Apart  from  its  place  in  Christian  thought  through 
the  direct  Messianic  interpretation  of  the  con- 
cluding section,  it  must  be  assigned  a  most  exalted 
place  by  all  students  of  Hebrew  religious  thought. 
When  we  look  at  these  passages  alone,  we  see 
that  the  Servant  is  not  the  true  Israel  over  against 
the  false,  but  rather  Israel  among  the  nations  in 
the  midst  of  whom  she  suffers.  Here  Israel  is 
not  thought  of  in  her  historical  and  present 
weakness  and  sin,  but  in  her  ideal  nature  as  the 


52  Jewish  Ethical  Idealism 

people  of  Yahweh  groaning  under  the  hand  of 
oppression.  She  is  not  merely  the  'pious  exiles 
only,'  but  Israel  of  the  exile  as  only  pious  in  con- 
trast with  her  ungodly  neighbors.  Sore  was  the 
problem  of  the  godly  in  exile.  But  their  faith  was 
firm,  and  out  of  it  sprang  a  hope  triumphant. 
What  she  had  been  suffering  for  was  the  good  of 
the  nations  of  the  world.  This  deepening  of 
their  religious  consciousness,  and  broadening  of 
their  religious  sympathy  was  the  fruit  of  the  exile 
and  the  glory  of  the  exilic  faith.  The  great 
message  of  the  exile  was  the  making  of  religion 
a  matter  of  the  innet  man,  and  to  the  author  of 
the  Servant  of  Yahweh  belongs  the  greatest 
credit  for  this  movement.  By  this  concept  the 
whole  problem  of  suffering  was  solved  in  terms  of 
martyrdom.  Thus  Israel,  because  of  her  faith- 
fulness, and  because  of  her  possession  of  the 
revelation  of  God,  becomes  the  great  witness  to 
all  the  nations.  But  wlien  we  turn  to  the  Ser- 
vant of  Yahweh  passages  as  used  by  the  author  of 
Dt.-Is.,  we  find  that  he  has  exercised  some  free- 
dom. For  him  the  Servant  of  Yahweh  seems  to 
mean  the  true  Israel  within  the  false.  His  whole 
message  is  one  of  comfort.  This  comfort  is 
grounded  in  a  faith  in  the  saving  power  of  the  grace 
of  God.  But  Yahweh  is  checked  in  his  work  of 
mercy  by  the  present  sinfulness  of  his  people. 
In  the  midst  of  Israel,  however,  there  is  a  faithful 
few,  showing  special  piety  and  bearing  a  special 
burden,  a  part  of  the  sinful,  suffering  people,  but 
free  from  the  burden  of  guilt.     This  is  the  problem 


The  Post- Reformation  Movements  53 

of  the  Sodom  narrative.  As  Gunkel  says,  "The 
narrative  treats  of  a  religious  problem:  Whether 
a  righteous  minority  is  in  a  position  to  prevent 
the  destruction  of  a  godless  people."  This  is  the 
problem  of  Dt.-Is.,  and  its  answer  comes  to  him 
in  the  message  of  the  Servant  of  Yahweh,  who 
was  chosen,  suffered,  and  died,  for  those  among 
whom  he  lived.  This  solution,  ready  to  hand, 
he  inserts  into  his  discussion,  bringing  it  to  a  con- 
clusion in  the  great  passage,  52:13-53:12.  In  it 
he  teaches  that  the  suffering  of  the  few  can  be 
accepted  by  God  "in  full  satisfaction  for  the  sins 
of  the  nation  as  a  whole."  Whether  the  Ser- 
vant's suffering  atoned  for  his  own  nation  or  for 
the  Gentiles,  the  religious  import  is  the  same,  and 
of  deep  spiritual  value.  It  is  not  too  much  to 
recognize  in  this  doctrine  of  the  Servant  of  Yah- 
weh one  of  those  elements  in  Judaism  which 
Harper  has  significantly  characterized  as  "pre- 
natal Christianity."  Montefiore  has  spoken  of 
it  as  a  reversion  to  an  exploded  sacrificial  theory. 
As  Christian  students  of  the  O.  T.,  we  might 
better  look  at  it  as  the  spiritualizing — the  ex- 
pressing in  terms  of  moral  values — of  the  same 
old  material  and  non-moral  symbolism.  Is  it 
too  much  of  a  reflection  of  Christian  interpreta- 
tion to  say  that  here  God  does  actually  share  in 
the  conquest  of  sin,  not  by  acceptance  of  an  arti- 
ficial ^trespass-offering,'  but  by  suffering  in  sym- 
pathy with  the  sinner  in  the  person  of  his  own 
chosen  and  beloved  Servant.^  Just  as  the  pro- 
phetic message  was  about  to  harden  into  the  cold 


54  Jewish  Ethical  Idealism 

mold  of  legal  formalism,  the  Great  Unknown 
brings  forth  this  thought.  The  burden  of  guilt 
has  led  Jeremiah  to  search  the  human  heart,  and 
the  watchman's  call  has  sent  Ezekiel  to  seek  lost 
souls.  A  national  covenant,  broken  by  false 
approach  to  God,  had  driven  both  prophets  to 
seek  consolation  in  the  vision  of  a  new  Covenant 
kept  by  regenerated  hearts.  God  himself  must 
save  his  own — one  by  one.  Dt.-Is.  is  confident 
that  there  is  grace  sufficient  for  this  salvation. 
And  this  not  because  of  any  conformity  to  a  ritual 
of  atoning  sacrifice,  but  because  of  the  atoning 
sacrifice  of  his  own,  chosen,  faithful.  Servant. 
God  himself  forgives  all  who  present  themselves 
through  the  sacrifice  of  one  whom  God  ordained 
and  inspired  to  serve,  and  suffer,  and  save. 

Priestly  Syncretism 

As  the  Hebrew  people  entered  Into  the  ex- 
perience of  the  exile,  there  seem  to  be  two  ele- 
ments in  their  religious  life — inconsistent  in  prin- 
ciple. Insistent  In  precept.  The  ancient  traditions 
of  sacrificial  ritual  had  crystaUIzed  into  the  elab- 
orate cult  of  the  Jerusalem  temple  under  the 
influence  of  political  movements  and  the  Deuter- 
onomlc  reforms.  But  still  the  lofty  idealism  of 
Amos  and  Hosea,  the  stern  denunciations  of 
Isaiah,  and  the  bitter  reproaches  of  Jeremiah, 
sounded  in  the  ears  of  the  people.  The  reform 
seemed  to  have  made  real  the  ideals  of  the  pro- 
phets, but  a  Jeremiah  showed  the  emptiness  of 


The  Post-Reformation  Movements  55 

their  service,  an  Ezekiel  showed  the  vanity  of 
their  hopes.  Even  the  holy  city  must  fall  be- 
cause of  her  sins.  The  Great  Unknown  has  no 
other  message  of  hope  save  Yahweh's  sovereign 
grace  and  the  Righteous  One's  unmerited  suffer- 
ings. Is  Judaism  to  be  an  empty  cult  of  sacri- 
ficial ceremonial  at  a  central  sanctuary,  or  is  it 
to  be  a  pure  idealism  trusting  in  the  saving  grace 
of  the  loving  Lord  of  the  loyal  Servant.^  The  im- 
mediate answer  to  this  question  was  neither  yes 
nor  no.  The  solution  of  the  problem  lay  in  a 
priestly  syncretism. 

The  name  which  stands  out  most  prominently 
in  this  movement  is  that  of  Ezekiel.  He  sought 
to  supply  the  spirit  of  religion  with  a  body.  The 
spirit  was  an  expression  of  the  holiness  of  God,  the 
body  was  a  ritual  of  holiness,  and  in  each  case 
'holiness'  reverted  to  its  early  suggestion  of 
'separateness,'  and  thus  the  whole  concept  was, 
it  cannot  be  denied,  materialized.  That  it  gave 
rise  to  legalism  arose  from  this  material  concept 
of  holiness.  The  aim  of  making  the  land  lit  for 
God's  dwelling  took  a  form  which  tended  to 
materialize  worship.  Yet  to  Ezekiel  himself 
the  moral  purpose  was  not  lost  sight  of,  but  was 
in  a  sense  fundamental.  Israel's  restoration  must 
be  upon  a  moral  basis,  however  corrupt  her  past 
history,  and  however  helpless  seems  to  be  her 
present  moral  state.  A  deeply  seated  corruption 
and  the  stain  of  a  long  history  of  sins,  call  for  a 
radical  cleansing.  This  God  alone  can  do.  This 
deeply  ethical  consciousness  gave  rise  to  the  con- 


56  Jewish  Ethical  Idealism 

cept  of  a  new  start,  based  upon  the  grace  of  God, 
maintained  by  conformity  to  a  divinely  imposed 
constitution.  This  sacred  constitution  lays  special 
stress  upon  the  priestly  office  and  functions.  The 
only  mediation  between  a  holy  God  and  a  re- 
bellious people  is  through  a  sanctified  priesthood. 
Thus  Ezekiel  makes  a  special  eflFort  to  purify  the 
priesthood  of  all  that  might  profane  the  approach 
to  the  Holy  One.  A  most  significant  element 
in  his  system  is  the  place  assigned  the  prince. 
He  is  no  longer  Israel's  warrior  king,  but  merely 
Israel's  prince.  His  is  not  the  sanctuary  of 
Yahweh,  but  he  is  merely  the  chief  of  all  the  pro- 
fane hosts  of  Israel.  The  prophet's  political 
economy  has  no  place  for  a  king.  The  pre-exilic 
state  is  now  gone,  and  in  the  future  the  church, 
not  the  state,  is  the  form  in  which  Israel's  life  is 
to  develop.  Judaism  has  arisen,  with  the  temple 
as  its  centre,  and  with  the  priest  as  Yahweh's 
representative  among  the  people. 

A  study  of  Haggai  and  Zechariah,  the  two  pro- 
phets of  the  early  restoration  period,  reveals  a 
development  of  that  syncretism  of  prophetic 
idealism  and  priestly  formality  which  is  so  promi- 
nent in  Ezekiel.  Driven  by  the  practical  exi- 
gencies of  the  time,  a  supreme  place  is  given  to 
the  work  of  rebuilding  the  temple.  Under  the 
influence  of  the  development  of  the  priestly  con- 
trol in  the  days  of  no  temple  and  foreign  environ- 
ment, and  caught  in  the  political  isolation  of  a 
subject  state,  the  Messianic  hope  centers  in  a 
subject  prince,   and   the   religious   consciousness 


The  Post- Re  formation  Movements  57 

gives  growing  prominence  to  the  head  of  the 
priestly  caste.  Yet  there  is  not  here  a  cold  or 
even  chilling  formalism,  for  there  is  still  the 
clear  ethical  consciousness  with  a  due  sense  of 
individual  responsibility,  and  a  keen  sense  of  the 
spiritual  element  in  the  relation  between  Yahweh 
and  his  people,  particular,  but  rooted  in  his  sov- 
ereign grace. 

Likewise  Malachi's  interest  in  the  cult  was  a 
religious  one,  and  sprang  out  of  a  true  spiritual 
motive — the  desire  to  conserve  the  true  concept 
of  the  deity.  He  would  not  have  Yahweh 
brought  to  shame  through  a  shameless  observance 
of  his  cult.  In  that  most  interesting  verse,  1:1 1, 
we  see  the  breadth  of  the  man.  According  to  the 
interpretation  generally  accepted,  this  prophet, 
so  interested  in  the  authorized  worship  of  Yahweh 
at  the  temple  of  Jerusalem,  reaches  to  the  concept 
that  even  the  worship  of  the  deity  at  heathen 
altars  is  to  be  recognized  as  acceptable  to  the 
God  of  Heaven.  Surely  this  is  not  narrow  legal- 
ism after  the  type  of  Pharisaic  Judaism!  And 
thus  again  we  see  the  ethical  note  in  later  pro- 
phecy. For,  whatever  be  our  interpretation  of 
the  passage,  Malachi  wanted  the  priests  of  Jeru- 
salem to  know  that  Yahweh  was  not  dependent 
upon  their  corrupt  service  for  his  honor,  for  men 
might  everywhere  offer  true  service  to  Yahweh 
the  God  of  Israel.  Thus  Malachi's  message,  while 
giving  special  emphasis  to  the  sins  of  his  people 
in  their  indifference  to  the  established  ritual  of 
the  temple,  calling  the  ministers  at  the  temple 


58  Jewish  Ethical  Idealism 

to  special  account  for  their  laxness,  still  lacks  not 
that  high  ethical  tone  which  places  it  among  the 
words  of  the  prophets.  His  high  ideals  for  the 
ministers  of  religion  and  his  pure  ideals  for  all 
social  relations  make  him  a  moral  teacher  in 
Israel.  In  him  we  see  the  blending  of  the  ritual 
legalism  and  the  spiritual  individualism  of  prac- 
tical religion  in  all  ages,  and  especially  at  this  time 
of  transition  and  testing. 

Summary  of  Post-Reformation  Movements 

We  are  now  about  to  take  that  step  which 
meant  so  much  to  later  Hebrew  history,  trans- 
forming the  prophetic  nation  into  a  priestly 
church.  Already  we  have  practically  answerd 
the  question,  How  can  these  things  be.^  In  the 
great  work  of  Ezekiel  and  the  prophetic  message 
of  the  restoration  prophets,  we  have  seen  how  the 
people  who  could  seize  upon  D  as  a  solution  of 
the  problem  raised  by  the  influence  of  a  cult 
threatened  by  the  corruption  of  local  heathenism, 
were  preparing  themselves  to  seize  upon  the  fully 
developed  code  of  the  priests  of  the  great  central 
sanctuary  of  Yahweh  to  solve  the  problem  raised 
as  they  faced  dissolution  in  the  midst  of  an  alien 
sovereign  power.  In  this  pre-exilic  and  early 
exilic  period  we  see  an  inevitable  and  practically 
expedient  priestly  syncretism  of  prophetic  spirit- 
ualism and  legal  materialism  in  matters  of  public 
worship.  The  moral  and  legal  blend  as  inter- 
dependent parts  of  one  whole,  facing  the  opposing 


The  P OS-Reformation  Movements  59 

forces  of  sin  within  and  oppression  without. 
While  Jeremiah,  Ezekiel  and  Deutero-Isaiah  at- 
tempted to  check  the  growing  legalism  which  the 
acceptance  of  D  encouraged,  even  prophecy  itself 
fell  under  the  influence  of  the  inevitable.  Nor 
was  there  in  any  strict  sense  a  real  falling  away 
from  their  high  calling,  but  rather  the  turning  of 
their  gifts  to  the  solution  of  a  new  and  difficult 
problem.  It  was  theirs  to  remove  the  heathenish 
element  from  the  popular  religious  life,  and  the 
most  direct  and  effective  way  was  by  giving  the 
people  a  purified  cult.  It  was  theirs  also  to  be 
the  leaven  of  spirituality  which  permeated  the 
heavier  mass  of  cruder  outward  forms  and  legal 
ceremonialism.  It  was  they  who  ever  kept  a 
certain  element  of  inconsistency  active  in  the 
Jewish  constitution  and  community.  The  de- 
veloping system  kept  calling  for  a  more  uniform 
type  of  religious  expression.  That  an  element 
in  the  people  should  abuse  the  formal  side  is  not  to 
be  wondered  at.  That  practical  reformers  should 
upon  occasion  especially  emphasize  it,  is  but  part 
of  the  development  of  human  institutions.  That 
this  period  illustrates  such  a  movement,  we  have 
seen. 

The  mission  of  prophecy  in  ridding  Israel  of 
the  corrupting  influences  of  inherited  institutions 
and  acquired  customs — of  a  conception  of  God 
and  his  worship  bound  to  place  and  precedent — 
an  emphasis  on  ritual  rather  than  morality — a 
confusion  in  the  conception  of  the  nature  of  God, 
due  to  the  local  traditions  and  practical  deductions 


6o  Jewish  Ethical  Idealism 


of    manifold    sanctuaries,    each    significant    and 
sacred — the   prophet's   mission   had   been   faith- 
fully accomplished,  and,  in  a  fallen  temple  and 
a  scattered  people,  divinely  corroborated.     Now 
a    new    problem    arises — how    conserve    all    this 
treasure  of  prophetic   truth — how   preserve   the 
worship  of  Yahweh  and  the  integrity  of  his  cause? 
To  this  problem  the  spiritual  and  religious  leaders 
of  the  restoration  gave  their  best  thought  and 
effort.     That  they  opened  the  sacred  codes  of  the 
past,  that  they  turned  to  the  ruined  altar  of  the 
God  of  the  covenant,  is  but  natural.     With  the 
faith  of  their  fathers  in  their  hearts,  and  the  code 
of  Moses   in  their  hands,   they  began  anew  the 
worship  of  Yahweh  of  Hosts— the  avenger  of  his 
own  glorious  name,  and  the  fulfiller  of  his  own 
eternal  promises.     The  Torah  of  Yahweh  is  now 
the  message  of  the  past,  prophet's  and  priest's. 
No  longer  is  it  the  living  message  of  the  inspired 
man  in  their   midst,  but   the  sacred  word  inter- 
preted by  priest  and  scribe,  executed  by   priest 
and    people.     The  final  steps  in  this  movement 
from  the  guidance  of  the  Hebrew  prophet  to  the 
dominance  of  the  Hebrew  canon,  is  the  burden  of 
our  next  study.     There  we  shall  see  that  not  all 
is  lost,  however  true  be  Wellhausen's  conclusion 
in  discussing  the  passing  from  the  oral  to  the 
written  Torah:   "When  it  is  recognized  that  the 
canon  is  what  distinguishes  Judaism  from  ancient 
Israel,  it  is  recognized  at   the    same    time    that 
what  distinguishes  Judaism  from  ancient  Israel  is 
the  written  Torah.     The  water  which  in  old  times 
rose   from   a   spring,   the  Epigoni    stored    up   in 
cisterns."     (Wellhausen,  History  of  Israel,  410.) 


CHAPTER  IV 
Post-Exilic  Priestly  Reconstruction 

IN  passing  from  the  closing  days  of  the  history 
of  the  Kingdom  of  Judah  to  the  scenes  portray- 
ed in  the  books  of  Ezra-Nehemiah,  we  overleap 
a  very  obscure  but  most  important  section  of  the 
history  of  the  Hebrew  people  and  their  religion — 
that  process  through  which  the  Hebrew  nation 
became  the  Jewish  church.  When  we  remember 
that  Jerusalem  fell  In  586  B.  C,  and  that  445  B. 
C.  is  a  convenient  date  for  the  movement  repre- 
sented by  Ezra-Nehemiah,  a  period  of  a  century 
and  a  half  must  be  taken  Into  account,  and  the 
work  of  such  men  as  Ezekiel,  Deutero-Isaiah  and 
Trito-Isaiah,  Haggai  and  Zechariah,  and  Malachi, 
must  be  given  its  full  significance.  Here  we 
have  some  of  the  highest  reaches  of  spiritual 
idealism  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  interpretation  of 
the  ethical  and  spiritual  concepts  of  the  covenant 
with  Yahweh  in  terms  of  religious  community 
on  the  other.  With  all  this  stored  up  in  the 
movement,  rich  is  the  field,  if  only  we  had  a  clear 
view  of  its  contents. 

Exilic  Influences 

The  Babylonian  exile  began  with  the  stripping 
of  the  city  of  Jerusalem  of  the  flower  of  its  popula- 

61 


62  Jewish  Ethical  Idealism 

tion,  royalty,  nobility,  and  leading  citizens,  when 
Jehoiachin  was  taken  captive,  597  B.  C.  This 
involved  the  best  of  the  people  in  captivity,  yet 
we  must  not  think  of  their  being  in  sore  distress. 
It  could  not  have  been  until  the  fall  of  Jerusalem, 
and  probably  then  only  for  a  season,  that  any 
real  harshness  entered  into  the  lot  of  the  people 
in  the  land  of  exile.  Yet  to  the  loyal  Hebrew  the 
experience  was  that  of  exile,  and  upon  his  con- 
science there  rested  the  sense  of  divine  judgment. 
The  prophets  had  foretold  the  event  as  a  penalty 
for  sin,  and  now  they  are  looking  forward  to  a 
day  when  they  can  again  worship  him  in  an 
acceptable  manner.  God's  judgment  upon  the 
past,  and  their  own  consciousness  of  the  faults 
and  failures  of  their  present  state  are  thus  potent 
factors  in  this  exilic  period  of  training  for  Judaism. 
The  influence  of  the  isolation  of  the  Israelites 
from  the  problems  of  government  and  the  affairs 
of  state  must  have  its  due  consideration.  Civil 
leaders  and  priests,  moral  thinkers  and  religious 
ministers,  had  little  for  trained  talents  save  the 
organization  of  the  exiled  community  and  the 
solution  of  the  practical  problems  sure  to  face 
them  in  the  day  of  promised  deliverance.  A 
people  of  deep  reverence  and  strong  race  conscious- 
ness must  express  themselves.  That  a  priestly 
code,  such  as  we  find  in  later  Judaism,  not  merely 
a  handbook  of  ritual  usage  but  the  history  and 
development  of  a  revealed  social  and  religious 
organism,  a  sacred  constitution  to  guide  in  the 
establishment  and  maintenance  of  a  theocracy, 


Post-Exilic  Priestly   Reconstruction          63 

should  be  the  product  of  the  isolation  of  such  a 
race  of  men  is  not  hard  to  understand.  Nor  must 
we  lose  sight  of  the  fact  that  in  the  midst  of  this 
exiled  community  was  a  group  of  men  deeply 
revered  by  the  mass  of  the  people,  the  traditional 
custodians  of  the  religious  treasures  of  the  nation, 
and  themselves  deeply  steeped  in  the  traditions 
and  intellectual  atmosphere  of  the  cult.  Reared 
at  the  altar  of  Zion  or  some  other  sacred  site, 
bred  in  the  handling  of  sacramental  symbols 
and  mystic  rites,  their  whole  sphere  of  thinking 
was  ritual  and  ceremonial,  and  their  whole  mode 
of  expression  must  have  been  legal.  However 
deeply  spiritual  their  personal  concepts  and  ex- 
perience of  God,  and  however  real  their  inter- 
course with  him,  their  natural  mode  of  expression 
was  in  terms  of  rite  and  law.  The  early  literature 
is  full  of  indirect  references  to  ritual  usage  and 
sacrificial  customs.  The  exiled  priests  must  have 
been  the  custodians  of  vast  treasures  of  tradition 
and  ritual.  Shall  we  think  of  these  priests  and 
Levites  in  Babylonia  as  forgetting  all  this  rich 
heritage.^  as  sealing  it  up  in  their  own  persons .^^ 
Every  evidence  points  to  them  as  the  leaders  in 
the  great  literary  activity  of  the  period  of  the  exile. 
Not  only  did  they  copy  and  enlarge  the  literature 
of  the  past,  but  new  material,  inspired  by  new 
experiences  and  intended  for  an  untried  but  rich 
future,  must  have  been  produced.  The  result  is  a 
constitution  wrought  out  by  devout  Jews  cut  off 
from  all  secular  authority  under  Persian  domi- 
nance, and  left  not  merely  to  meditate  upon  the 


64  Jewish  Ethical  Idealism 

holy  law,  but  to  reduce  its  treasures  to  a  system 
adequate  to  meet  the  demands  of  a  growing 
priestly  party.  There  is  a  sense  in  which  all  this 
is  but  a  blending  of  influences  set  agoing  by  the 
legal  impulse  in  D  and  the  individualism  of 
Jeremiah.  Thus  arose  a  distinct  interest  in  the 
cult  together  with  a  lofty  personal  piety.  Surely 
a  striking  juxtaposition  of  seemingly  incongruous 
elements,  but  only  revealing  the  compromise 
which  constitutes  the  essence  of  Judaism.  All 
the  force  of  the  deepest  truths  of  prophetism  was 
used  to  give  weight  to  a  carefully  prepared  code  of 
priestly  authority,  resulting  in  a  deep  devotion 
and  sincere  piety  in  the  observance  of  religious 
legalism.  But  more  of  this  again.  Suffice  to 
say,  the  idle  priesthood  had  wrought  well. 

We  must  not  forget  that  these  were  not  the 
only  influences  active  during  the  exile.  A  grow- 
ing spirituality  accompanied  these  influences 
tending  toward  the  growth  of  legal  ideals  and 
institutions.  The  ground  for  this  is  that  the 
exilic  period  was  dominated  by  a  cherished 
treasure  of  spiritual  power  in  the  prophecy  of  the 
past.  We  cannot  ignore  the  dominance  of  pro- 
phetic ideals  in  the  formation  of  the  legal  codes, 
and  in  Judaism  we  find  an  effort  to  realize  the 
prophetic  ideals  in  the  keeping  of  the  law.  So 
that  Stade  has  said,  "Right  here  it  is  especially 
to  be  noted,  that  it  is  not  sufficient  for  an  under- 
standing of  the  course  of  history  to  relate  Pro- 
phecy and  Christianity  to  one  another  simply  as 
prediction  and  fulfilment,  but  that  Christianity 


Post-Exilic  Priestly  Reconstruction  65 

attaches  itself  Immediately  to  Judaism  and  only 
through  it  to  prophecy.  "  (Stade,  Alttestament- 
liche  Geschichte,  I.,  553.)  Christianity  could 
only  come  from  Judaism  because  Judaism  came 
from  Hebrew  Prophecy. 

One  of  the  elements  of  spirituality  in  this  period 
must  have  been  prayer.  Prayer  was  doubtless 
an  element  in  primitive  worship,  and  all  sacrifice 
must  have  been  accompanied  by  some  form  of 
address  to  the  deity.  But  prayer,  apart  from 
sacrificial  approach  to  God,  prayer  as  immediate 
fellowship  with  God,  seems  to  have  gained  for 
itself  special  prominence  during  the  exile.  Cut 
off  from  the  ordinary  means  of  approach,  yet 
conscious  of  the  immediate  presence  of  God  in 
their  lives,  the  exiles  must  have  sought  that 
simplest  form  of  public  worship,  prayer.  And 
as  the  diaspora  left  thousands  far  from  the  re- 
newed altar  of  sacrifice,  the  lesson  learned  in  the 
exile  was  never  lost.  And  so  with  the  Sabbath. 
Carried  into  the  exile  because  of  its  distinctly 
Hebrew  associations  in  the  midst  of  their  heathen 
captors,  the  day  of  rest  for  religious  freedom  must 
have  been  seized  as  a  most  convenient  and  ex- 
pressive means  of  cultivating  the  spiritual  life. 
Left  to  hymns,  and  prayer,  and  Scripture  reading 
as  the  only  means  of  observing  such  a  day,  the 
spiritual  elements  of  their  faith  and  cult  must 
have  been  cultivated  by  the  Sabbath  observance 
of  the  exile.  Out  of  the  same  conditions,  and 
with  the  same  spiritual  power,  must  have  come 
forth    the    synagogue.     This    so-called    "Sunday 


66  Jewish  Ethical  Idealism 


School"  institution  of  the  Jews  stands  as  one  of 
the  most  potent  spiritual  influences  of  all  religious 
history,  and  its  rise  was  doubtless  during  the  exile. 
Our  last  witness  to  the  growing  spirituality  of 
this  period  is  the  Psalter.  It  is  frequently  called 
"the  hymn-book  of  the  Second  Temple,"  and, 
whatever  its  origin,  so  it  proved  to  be.  But  that 
all  its  contents  is  post-exilic,  and  most  of  it  quite 
late,  is  a  view  which  we  may  regard  as  extreme. 
There  is  strong  evidence  for  sacred  songs,  such  as 
may  be  found  in  the  Psalter,  produced  in  the  pre- 
exilic  and  exilic  period.  The  development  of 
these  religious  lyrics,  such  a  natural  sequence  to 
the  spirit  and  gifts  of  an  Isaiah  and  especially  a 
Jeremiah,  must  have  been  one  of  the  most  spiritual 
elements  in  the  exilic  experience.  We  shall  only 
note  the  fact  and  its  significance.  We  shall  not 
even  attempt  to  pick  out  the  Psalms  of  this  period. 
But  a  point  not  to  be  overlooked  is  that  even 
later  Psalms  may  show  us  the  deep  spiritual 
emotions  with  which  the  Jew  of  the  exile  or  many 
centuries  later  could  look  upon  the  cult  and  its 
rites.  A  glance  at  such  a  table  as  that  given  by 
Briggs  reveals  what,  to  one  careful  student,  must 
have  been  the  rich  store  of  sacred  lyric  upon  which 
the  exile  fed  his  spiritual  life,  and  also  the  rich 
fruitage  of  that  life.  An  extreme  criticism  like 
that  of  Duhm  or  Cheyne,  placing  not  merely  the 
majority  of  the  Psalms  as  post-exilic,  but  all,  and 
making  the  vast  majority  to  be  the  product  of 
generations  dominated  by  the  rod  of  the  Law, 
only  serves  to  emphasize,  as  we  shall  have  need  to 


Post-Exilic  Priestly  Reconstruction         67 

observe  again,  that  the  Interest  In  the  cult  and 
its  ceremonial  and  sacrificial  ritual  does  not  crush 
out  all  spirituality^  So  long  as  the  Psalter  is  in 
our  hands,  we  cannot  deny  that  alongside  of  the 
tendency  of  Judaism  toward  mere  formalism 
there  existed  a  vital  energy  which  constantly 
revealed  itself  in  a  growing  and  deepening  spiritu- 
ality. 

Conditions  in  Jerusalem 

Probably  one  of  the  most  far-reaching  minor 
mistakes  In  the  popular  conception  of  the  history 
of  the  exile  is  that  It  was  a  period  during  which  all 
Israel  was  in  Babylonia,  and  the  land  of  Judah 
lay  absolutely  desolate  and  uninhabited.  A 
literal  understanding  of  Jer.  44:2  leads  to  a  false 
impression  of  the  conditions,  for  there  must  have 
been  a  substantial  remnant  both  in  the  city  and 
the  villages  left  after  the  deportations  of  Nebu- 
chadnezzar. In  addition  to  this  must  be  taken 
into  account  the  Inroads  of  the  neighboring  tribes, 
Edomites,  Moabites,  etc.  Over  this  mixed 
community,  Jerusalem  would  still  hold  the  su- 
premacy. Thus  we  find  much  of  the  old  life 
maintained,  with  sacrifices  and  priests.  Es- 
pecially must  we  recognize  that  the  outlying  dis- 
tricts were  probably  left  largely  unmolested. 
This  means  that  In  the  environs  of  the  desolated 
city  was  no  wholly  Insignificant  remnant  of  Jews 
who  would  very  naturally  turn  toward  the  sacred 
site  and  make  its  deserted  streets  their  dwelling 


68  Jewish  Ethical  Idealism 

place.  To  this  Jerusalem  community  some 
think  Haggai  and  Zechariah  made  their  appeal. 
Better,  perhaps,  we  should  say  that  this  element 
was  the  dominant  factor  in  the  people  to  whom 
these  prophets  spoke.  We  find  then  that  the 
returning  exiles  found  themselves  in  the  midst 
of  the  increased  remnant  of  the  original  people — ■ 
increased  by  natural  processes  and  foreign  im- 
migration. They  found  a  people  treasuring  old 
customs,  traditions  and  sites,  not  least  the  holy 
place  and  its  authorized  ritual.  A  people,  how- 
ever, sorely  corrupted  by  feeble  leadership  and 
foreign  contamination. 

A  careful  study  of  the  literature  of  the  period 
leads  to  the  conclusion  that  there  was  a  return 
under  Cyrus  soon  after  his  occupation  of  Babylon, 
but  that  such  a  return  must  be  recognized  as  but 
slightly  interesting  the  exiles.  Only  a  small 
band  of  enthusiasts  could  have  answered  the  first 
call.  All  the  evidence  indicates  that  "the  great 
moment  of  deliverance  had  found  a  puny  race." 
This  applies  to  the  Jews  both  in  Jerusalem^  and 
Babylon.  It  was  only  as  such  men  as  Haggai  and 
Zechariah,  Ezra  and  Nehemiah,  came  to  the 
front,  that  the  movement  in  Babylon  toward 
Jerusalem,  and  in  Jerusalem  toward  full  recon- 
struction, became  energetic  and  effective.  In 
Jerusalem,  the  result  of  the  exiles'  enthusiastic 
idealism  and  the  residents'  determined  conserva- 
tism led  to  a  compromise  and  a  secession.  Com- 
promise led  out  of  the  wiUingness  to  broaden  and 
develop.     Secession  grew  out  of  a  guarding  of 


Post-Exilic  Priestly   Reconstruction          69 

sacred  rights  and  rites.  The  one  developed  into 
Jewish  universalism,  the  other  culminated  in  the 
Samaritan  schism.  The  potent  force  in  either 
case  was  the  exclusiveness  of  the  exiles  as  ex- 
pressed in  the  law  of  the  priests. 

The  Priestly  Reconstruction 

The  thinking  men  of  the  exile  were  facing  a  sore 
problem.  The  experience  of  the  past  must  be 
explained,  its  burden  in  national  captivity  and 
individual  hardship  must  be  avoided  in  the  future. 
A  world  of  heathen  influences  surrounds  them, 
threatening  to  engulf  them.  The  deep  spirituality 
of  the  prophetic  message  was  beyond  the  reach 
of  the  average  man.  All  these  weakening  facts 
and  threatening  dangers  called  for  caution  and 
preparedness.  The  repetition  of  the  divine  judg- 
ment could  only  be  warded  off"  by  avoiding  the 
evils  of  the  past.  The  threatened  absorption  in 
the  world  of  heathenism  about  them  served  to 
remind  them  of  the  necessity  of  purifying  their 
worship,  and  of  making  most  clear  the  fellowship 
between  the  people  and  the  deity.  But  to  express 
this  efl"ort  in  terms  of  pure  spiritualism  was  to 
carry  it  beyond  the  religious  sensibilities  of  the 
dominant  mass  of  the  people.  Judaism  was  the 
resultant  of  an  effort  to  make  real  the  solution  of 
all  this  mass  of  human  possibilities.  The  basis 
of  the  great  priestly  reconstruction,  then,  lies  in 
an  efl^ort  to  put  into  permanent  form  the  lesson 
of  the  exile.     Add  to  this  the  guarding  against  the 


70  Jewish  Ethical  Idealism 

influence  of  the  surrounding  and  native  heathen 
cults  and  customs,  and  we  find  the  explanation 
of  many  of  the  points  of  emphasis  in  the  priestly 
legislation.  The  horror  of  the  catastrophe  which 
had  befallen  them  led  to  the  emphasis  upon  the 
ritual  of  atonement,  the  central  element  of  the 
legal  code.  The  whole  Priestly  Code  shows  the 
effort  to  hedge  against  the  influence  of  alien  wor- 
ship, the  influence  of  heathen  elements  in  the 
popular  cult.  Not  as  discarding  prophecy,  but 
in  order  to  conserve  its  spiritual  treasures,  the 
exilic  leaders  turned  to  the  legal  precepts. 

Passing  from  the  elements  of  the  problem  which 
faced  the  men  of  this  period,  we  turn  to  seek  those 
personal  influences  which  were  most  potent  in 
the  solution  of  the  problem.  Two  names  stand 
out  most  prominently,  Ezra  and  Nehemiah,  how- 
ever many  were  their  predecessors  and  com- 
panions. A  critical  study  of  the  work  of  Ezra 
and  Nehemiah  has  raised  the  question  of  the  or- 
der in  time  of  the  activity  of  the  two  men.  The 
chronological  question  may  not  be  so  vital  here, 
but  the  religious  development  calls  for  the  work 
of  a  Nehemiah  as  a  preparation  for  the  great 
religious  movement  centering  in  Ezra.  Which- 
ever came  first  in  fact,  Nehemiah's  reforms  formed 
the  good  ground  in  which  Ezra's  law  book  took 
root  and  grew  into  completed  Judaism.  His 
work  was  the  preparation  for  the  great  assembly. 
He  was  that  link  between  the  mixed  people  of  the 
reoccupied  city  and  the  somewhat  idealized 
vision  of  reconstruction  which  was  being  crystal- 


Post-Exilic  Priestly  Reconstruction  71 

lized  in  the  code  forming  amid  the  peculiar  con- 
ditions surrounding  the  exiles.  In  him  we  find 
the  great  force  sent  from  the  East  to  prepare  the 
way  for  the  new  code.  And  when  the  code  ap- 
peared, it  showed  the  influence  of  the  movement 
in  Jerusalem  as  well  as  the  meditation  in  Babylon. 
We  are  not  told  what  influences  impelled  Ezra 
in  undertaking  his  expedition.  It  is  not  improb- 
able that  Nehemiah  himself  won  him  to  the 
support  of  the  cause  in  Jerusalem.  It  was  not 
hard  to  find  support  in  developing  the  material 
forces,  but  to  purify  and  develop  the  social  order 
required  just  such  a  kernel  of  religious  enthu- 
siasts and  just  such  a  standard  of  procedure  as 
was  found  in  Ezra's  band  and  Ezra's  book.  This 
raises  the  fair  question  whether  Nehemiah  had 
not  had  some  influence  in  preparing  the  code  for 
the  people  as  well  as  the  people  for  the  code.  In 
any  case,  Ezra  came  into  prominence,  so  far  as 
the  introduction  of  the  law  was  concerned,  after 
Nehemiah  had  prepared  the  way  by  some  radical 
and  practical  reforms.  The  natural  opposition 
to  a  code,  which  in  some  elements  must  have  been 
looked  upon  as  superimposed  from  without,  also 
required  just  such  a  leavening  influence  as  the 
band  of  enthusiasts  come  to  permeate  the  social 
structure  with  the  living  working  out  of  these  new 
ideals  and  precepts.  Ezra's  band  must  have 
been  as  vital  to  the  success  of  the  movement  as 
was  Ezra's  book,  and  more  so  than  Nehemiah's 
preparation.  Thus,  and  only  thus,  a  reform  of 
far-reaching  import  and  involving  elements  most 


72  Jewish  Ethical  Idealism 

radical  was  started  with  no  overwhelming  dis- 
turbance in  its  introduction.  Master  hands  at  a 
moment  of  opportune  crisis  guided  the  people 
through  a  period  of  vital  transition. 

Summary 

In  glancing  back  over  this  period  and  move- 
ment, we  see  that  its  trend  is  that  of  conservation 
of  the  sacred  treasures  and  traditions  of  the  past, 
in  passing  into  an  era  of  unknown  possibilities  and 
sure  problems.  The  central  fact  in  the  movement 
is  the  adoption  of  the  systemtized  code  of  re- 
ligious and  communal  law  in  which  the  spirit  of 
all  that  was  permanent  in  the  past  and  vitalizing 
for  the  future  was  objectified  in  a  permanent 
body.  When  we  approach  the  question  of  the 
adoption  of  the  law,  and  state  it  as  a  concrast 
between  adherence  to  the  high  ethical  and 
spiritual  standards  of  the  earlier  prophets,  and 
the  lower  one  of  adherence  to  formal  precepts  and 
systematized  cult,  the  problem  becomes  a  very 
diiferent  one  from  that  which  arises  if  we  attempt 
to  put  ourselves  at  the  close  of  the  Babylonian 
captivity,  and  seek  to  gather  up  the  treasures  of 
the  past  and  make  our  chart  for  a  bold  plunge 
into  the  untried  seas  of  the  future.  It  is  but  fair 
to  the  leaders  of  that  day,  and  to  the  spirit  of 
rational  purpose  running  through  the  history  of 
men,  to  do  so.  Our  attempt  has  resulted  in  the 
recognition  of  the  effort  of  men  of  wisdom-  and 
spiritual    impulses    to    send   forth   the    spirit   of 


Post-Exilic  Priestly  Reconstruction         73 


ethical  monotheism  clothed  in  terms  suited  to 
meet  the  world's  chill  and  fire.  Law  and  spirit- 
uality are  not  necessarily  antagonistic  terms,  but 
rather  complementary.  Spirituality  fares  best  in 
the  world  of  sinful  conflict  clothed  in  the  garb 
of  Jaw.  The  garb  must  not  be  taken  for  the 
real,  but  the  spirit  must  not  be  left  carelessly 
exposed  to  the  hard  knocks  and  rude  comments 
of  the  world.  The  whole  legal  movement  may 
be  viewed  as  an  attempt  to  embody  for  practical 
preservation  and  transmission  the  spirituality  of 
Hebrew  prophecy,  the  rich  spiritual  treasures 
inherited  from  the  past  by  Judaism. 

In  pre-exilic  Israel  some  of  the  world's  greatest 
treasures  of  religious  truth  and  moral  idealism 
had  been  brought  to  expression.  In  their  history 
and  literature  God  had  wrought  to  the  highest 
revelation  of  his  moral  and  spiritual  nature.  By  a 
long  process  he  had  led  them  to  the  consciousness 
and  expression  of  the  world's  loftiest  concepts  of 
his  unique  nature  and  of  his  ethical  character. 
One  God,  the  Holy  One  of  Israel,  was  a  treasure 
in  earthern  vessels,  but  of  priceless  value.  In  the 
Babylonian  captivity,  in  the  reconstruction  under 
Persian  overlordship,  all  this  hard-won  treasure 
of  untold  human  value  was  at  stake.  Stored  up 
in  a  band  of  war  captives  and  political  exiles, 
committed  to  a  weak  community  of  far-distant 
subjects  of  a  world-power  of  alien  race  and  re- 
ligion, how  shall  these  riches  be  conserved  .f* 
That  was  the  problem  which  faced  the  leaders  of 
the    restoration.     The    law.    book    which    Ezra 


74  Jewish  Ethical  Idealism 

brought  with  him  from  Babylon  was  an  answer 
to  this  problem.  A  recognition  of  this  purpose 
is  essential  to  a  true  understanding  of  it.  This 
code  Is  not  intended  to  form  or  feed  the  spiritual 
nature  so  much  as  to  conserve  those  priceless 
stores  of  religious  truth  and  spiritual  idealism 
uttered  by  the  prophets  and  treasured  up  In  the 
hearts,  lives,  and  literature,  of  the  spiritually 
receptive  among  the  people.  The  code  is  not  the 
kernel  of  Judaism  but  the  shell,  for  the  preserving 
and  conveying  of  the  kernel.  The  spiritual 
treasures  are  stored  up  in  this  sacred  casket  and 
handed  down  the  ages,  and  at  no  time  was  the 
casket  a  mere  case  of  dry  bones,  for  It  was  always 
kept  alive  In  individual  human  hearts  and  lives. 
There  were  spiritual  values  to  be  conserved,  even 
when  men  forgot  them  In  their  pride  in  the 
treasured  casket.  It  might  become  a  fetish  but 
never  a  tomb. 

And  now  we  are  ready  to  gather  up  our  threads 
and  bring  oi^r  discussion  to  a  close.  We  have 
remembered  the  spiritual  struggle  conducted  by 
the  prophets,  battling  against  false  rites  and  cus- 
toms, distorted  conceptions  of  God  and  sin.  In- 
herited from  a  pagan  past  or  pagan  environments. 
We  see  that  battle  apparently  lost  in  the  fall  of 
Jerusalem  and  the  scattering  of  the  best  of  her 
people.  Suddenly  there  appears  In  the  ancient 
site  of  Israel  a  new  Israel,  organized  and  domi- 
nated by  a  constitution  expressing  the  priestly 
ideals  of  religious  life.  Not  the  changing  voice  of 
inspired  leaders,  but  the  unchanging  word  of  a 


Post-Exilic  Priestly   Reconstruction         75 


written  code  guides  the  moral  and  spiritual 
destinies  of  the  people  of  God.  Must  we  concede 
that  all  the  struggles  of  the  prophets  have  been  in 
vain,  that  all  spirituality  has  gone  out  of  Israel 
under  this  reign  of  written  law?  Our  answer  has 
been  in  tracing  the  steps  leading  up  to  this  new 
Israel.  We  have  seen  the  law  grow  out  of  the 
blending  of  influences  pouring  in  from  the  pro- 
phetic voices  and  the  terrible  experiences  of  the 
past,  from  the  national  Isolation,  religious  enthu- 
siasm, and  literary  activities  of  the  exile,  from  the 
sore  trials  and  faithful  struggles  of  a  feeble  rem- 
nant In  the  desolated  home-land.  We  have  seen 
all  blend  into  a  code  of  Priestly  Law,  gathering  up 
the  rich  treasures  of  prophetic  faith  In  the  one  and 
holy  God  of  Israel,  and  enfolding  but  not  embalm- 
ing them  In  the  familiar  forms  of  a  ritual  of  un- 
known antiquity  and  sacred  tradition.  W^e  have 
refused  to  see  the  spirit  wholly  crushed  in  the 
body,  the  kernel  wholly  hardened  in  the  shell, 
and  the  moral  and  spiritual  wholly  lost  in  the 
ceremonial  and  outward. 


CHAPTER  V 

The  Law  Vindicated 

IN  rapid  strides  we  have  swept  through  the 
religious  history  of  Israel,  with  our  minds 
centered  upon  the  problem  of  the  relation  of 
the  post-exilic  ritual  legalism  of  the  priests  to  the 
pre-exilic  ethical  idealism  of  the  prophets.  Grant- 
ing full  value  to  all  the  factors  in  the  problem, 
our  conclusion  must  be  that,  so  far  as  the  O.  T. 
itself  is  concerned,  we  do  not  find  in  Judaism  the 
Pharisaic  legalism  so  often  charged  to  it.  What 
we  do  find  is  a  consistently  maintained  ethical 
idealism,  struggling  with  the  practical  problems  of 
most  trying  times,  but  never  sacrificing  the 
essential  spirituality  of  its  prophetic  inheritance, 
even  when  placing  a  temporary  emphasis  upon  the 
visible  forms  called  forth  by  a  faith  which  was 
laboring  for  expression  in  a  hostile  environment. 
Whatever  may  have  been  the  hardening  and 
externalizing  effects  of  the  dominance  of  the  law 
in  the  later  Judaic  community,  even  the  greatest 
spiritual  Prophet  of  the  Jews  began  his  ministry 
by  declaring  that  "it  becometh  us  to  fulfil  all 
righteousness,"  even  the  most  formal  of  outward 
ceremonies,  and  he  went  to  his  death  from  the 
table  of  the  paschal  lamb,  not  as  a  mere  custom 
of  his  people,  but  under  an  impulse  leading  him 

76 


The  Law  Vindicated  77 


to  say,  "With  desire  I  desired  to  eat  this  supper 
with  you  before  I  suffer. "     The  very  One  who 
was    most    keen    in    his    denunciation    of    mere 
Pharisaic  legalism  saw  the  conserving  value  and 
the  spiritual  energy  stored  up  in  the  legal  ex- 
pression   of    Hebrew    faith.     That    a    canonized 
literature  and  a  legalized  cult  are  full  of  grave 
dangers  to  pure  spiritual  and  ethical  idealism,  we 
are  free  to  concede.     That  the  threatened  evils 
were  reaHzed  in  well-known  phases  of  Rabbinical 
Judaism,   we  have  no  object  in   denying,   even 
where  we  may  easily  argue  extenuating  circum- 
stances.    What  we  have  found  is  that  the  passing 
from  one  emphasis  to  the  other  was  dominated 
by  a  desire  to  conserve  the  spiritual  rather  than 
by  degeneration  into  the  mere  formalism  which  is 
capable  of  expression   in   empty  legalism.     The 
ritual  legalism  of  the  priests  was  the  expression 
of  the  vital  energy  of  the  religion  of  Israel,  seeking 
to  hold  and  discipline  the  social  community  in 
the    adoption    and    transmission    of  those    lofty 
spiritual  truths  inherited  from  the  past  and  de- 
veloped by  the  prophets.     Christianity  is  but  the 
fruit  of  that  endeavor.     The  historic   Christian 
church  is  but  a  repeating  of  the  same  process  of 
conservation  of  the  spirit  through  the  outward 
form. 

The  Prophetic  Struggle 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  most  significant 
fact  in  all  the  history  of  the  Hebrew  religion  lies 


78  Jewish  Ethical  Idealism 

in  the  struggle  of  the  prophets  for  ethical  idealism. 
The  centuries  preceding  the  period  of  the  great 
prophets  had  left  a  rich  legacy  of  lofty  tradition 
and  noble  aspiration  after  God,  but  also  a  vast 
heap  of  ancient  Semitic  rubbish  and  modern 
Canaanitish  corruption.  Against  these  latter 
forces  and  in  conservation  of  the  ancient  spiritual 
treasures,  the  prophets  labored.  In  such  a  task 
"foundations  alone  remain  firm,"  but  these  men 
found  the  foundations,  even  by  tearing  down 
long-treasured  towers  of  corruption,  and  thereon 
they  built  anew  and  for  all  time.  Their  demand 
for  a  spiritual  form  of  approach  to  God  was 
grounded  in  the  depth  of  the  prophetic  grasp  of 
the  great  concept  of  ethical  monotheism.  The 
deepest  plunge  of  O.  T.  prophecy  into  this  mystery 
of  godliness  is  to  be  found  in  Hosea's  doctrine  of 
the  jealous  love  of  Yahweh  for  his  people,  with  the 
complementary  love  of  Israel  for  its  God.  This 
was  but  a  \ital  expression  of  that  principle  of 
ethical  monotheism  which  binds  the  heart  of  his 
people  to  one  holy  God.  The  vast  movements 
among  the  world-powers,  and  the  inevitable  fate 
awaiting  the  restless  little  state  amid  the  Judean 
hills,  were  interpreted  as  evidences  of  the  sovereign 
might  and  absolute  world-sway  of  Yahweh  the 
God  of  Israel.  All  Israel's  boasted  confidence  in 
her  sacred  sanctuary  and  orderly  rites  was  as 
nothing  in  the  face  of  the  wrath  and  power  of  the 
God  of  might  and  right.  And  thus  the  prophets 
have  ever  stood  as  the  world's  greatest  teachers  of 
the   essential   truths   concerning   the   moral   and 


The  Law  Vindicated  79 

unique  character  of  God.  The  words  of  Christ, 
"God  is  a  spirit:  and  they  that  worship  him  must 
worship  in  spirit  and  truth,"  are  but  the  con- 
clusion to  the  argument  presented  to  the  con- 
sciences of  men  by  the  ancient  prophet  of  Israel. 

The  Exile  and  Restoration 

All  that  the  prophets  foretold  of  Yahweh's 
destructive  wrath  was  fulfilled  in  the  heavy  blows 
which  fell  from  the  mailed  hand  of  Assyria  and 
Babylonia.  Samaria  fell,  and  the  northern  king- 
dom was  dismembered  never  to  be  restored. 
Jerusalem  was  burnt  by  the  destroyer,  and  Judah 
went  into  captivity  to  return  to  the  home-land 
after  a  period  of  discipline  in  a  land  of  strangers. 
The  blow  which  smote  the  holy  city  seemed  to  fall 
heaviest  upon  the  house  of  Yahweh  and  the 
ministers  of  religion,  but  when  the  battle  cleared 
and  the  dust  of  conflict  had  settled,  it  was  seen 
that  not  the  temple  of  God,  but  the  palace  of  the 
king  had  fallen  never  to  be  restored.  Israel  as  a 
nation  had  fallen  never  to  be  revived.  In  the 
house  of  David  only  spiritual  idealism  and 
patriotic  fanaticism  found  visions  of  a  glorious 
future.  Thus  it  seemed  as  though  all  that  rich 
treasury  of  spiritual  truth  committed  to  the 
Hebrew  people  was  about  to  be  lost  in  the  over- 
throw and  dispersion  of  its  unworthy  custodians. 
"Where  is  Yahweh,  the  God  of  Elijah.?"  What 
has  become  of  the  message  of  the  prophet?  It 
has  been  vindicated  in  the  destruction  of  his  own 


8o  Jewish  Ethical  Idealism 

people.  That  God  who  could  raise  up  Hazael, 
the  Syrian,  to  lift  the  sword  of  wrath  against 
Israel,  his  covenant  people,  could  fulfil  the  strange 
message  of  an  Amos  or  a  Jeremiah.  The  smoke 
from  the  sacrificial  altar  had  not  blinded  the  eyes 
of  their  God  to  the  scenes  of  oppression  and 
licentiousness  in  the  midst  of  the  people.  The 
sweet  savor  of  the  far-brought  spices  had  not  de- 
ceived the  God  of  purity.  The  sacrificial  vapors 
and  the  very  incense  itself  were  heavy  with  the 
stench  of  corruption  and  death,  and  all  these 
things  became  an  abomination  to  God.  "Eph- 
raim  is  joined  to  idols;  let  him  alone,"  said  the 
prophet  Hosea.  And  another  has  said  in  a 
striking  passage,  "And  I  saw,  when,  for  this  very 
cause  that  backsliding  Israel  had  committed 
adultery,  I  had  put  her  away  and  given  her  a  bill  of 
divorcement,  yet  treacherous  Judah  her  sister 
feared  not;  but  she  also  went  and  played  the 
harlot. "  Wherefore,  "A  voice  is  heard  in  Ramah, 
lamentation,  and  bitter  weeping,  Rachel  weeping 
for  her  children;  she  refuseth  to  be  comforted  for 
her  children,  for  they  are  not."  And  by  the 
rivers  of  Babylon  the  men  of  Jerusalem  sat  down, 
yea,  they  wept,  when  they  remembered  Zion,  for 
Yahweh  had  cast  off  his  people. 

Yet  exiled  Judah  forgot  not  the  city  of  Yahweh, 
for  Yahweh  forgot  not  his  people.  The  mission 
of  the  Hebrew  nation  was  completed,  but  in  the 
keeping  of  the  exiled  people  had  been  committed 
a  treasure  of  spiritual  truth  vital  enough  to  endure 
transportation,    precious   enough    to   be   the   in- 


The  Law  Vindicated  8i 

heritance  of  all  the  coming  ages.  Thus  Judah, 
a  feeble  remnant  in  a  desolated  land,  and  an 
obscure  people  in  a  vast  alien  civilization,  kept 
alive  the  consciousness  of  a  common  faith  and  a 
common  mission,  and  an  opportune  moment  in  the 
vast  swing  of  the  wheel  of  national  destiny  was 
seized,  and  the  exile  returned  to  the  home-land. 
Amid  the  strenuous  struggles  against  the  difficul- 
ties raised  by  ruined  walls  and  burned  temple, 
by  feeble  friends  and  fierce  foes,  by  corrupt 
priests  and  greedy  people,  the  temple  was  rebuilt, 
the  city  was  rewalled,  and  a  social  organism  was 
eifected,  and  Judaism  was  firmly  established. 
But  in  Judaism  the  Hebrew  nation  was  no  more. 
Instead  of  the  Hebrew  nation  is  to  be  seen  the 
children  of  the  congregation  of  Israel.  Israel  is 
no  longer  a  political  state  among  the  nations  of 
the  world,  but  a  religious  community  in  a  little 
Persian  province,  a  Church  among  the  sons  of 
men.  The  key  to  the  transformation  lies  in  the 
adoption  of  a  constitution  touching  the  whole 
social  organism,  and  dominated  by  a  consistent 
and  pervading  rehgious  motive.  This  constitu- 
tion was  the  so-called  Priestly  Code. 

Israel  under  the  Law 

All  the  fruits  of  exilic  experience  and  of  priestly 
activity  were  summed  up  in  that  book  of  the  Law 
of  Moses.  Heirs  of  the  spiritual  treasures  of  the 
past,  and  regarding  themselves  as  the  guardians 
of  the  eternal  issues  of  the  future,  the  formulators 


82  Jewish  Ethical  Idealism 

of  this  legislation  built  carefully,  and  the  effect 
of  their  labors  shows  that  in  a  broad  and  far- 
reaching  sense  they  built  wisely.  That  Israel  at 
times  seized  the  concrete  to  the  rejection  of  the 
ideal,  that  she  followed  the  easy  course  of  ritual 
observance  rather  than  the  harder  path  of  devo- 
tion to  the  spirit,  does  not  condemn  either  the 
purpose  or  the  method  of  the  post-exilic  leaders, 
but  only  shows  that  their  problem  was  real  and 
that  their  method  of  approach  was  after  all  the 
only  feasible  one  in  seeking  to  win  a  firm  foothold 
for  spiritual  religion  in  a  people  of  common  human 
impulses. 

The  essential  weakness  of  the  law  lies  in  the 
emphasis  upon  the  formal  element  of  religious 
relations  over  the  moral  and  spiritual  content. 
The  idealism  of  the  prophetic  message  was  ob- 
scured by  this  emphasis,  and  some  of  the  vital 
energy  was  threatened.  Religion  in  its  outward 
expression  became  an  orderly  and  strictly  ordered 
series  of  sacrificial  and  ceremonial  ritual.  In  the 
place  of  that  piety  which  is  satisfied  with  direct 
fellowship  with  the  divine,  and  spontaneous 
expression  in  word  and  act,  there  was  offered  an 
ideal  of  Pharisaic  righteousness  summed  up  in  a 
punctilious  performance  of  the  appointments 
of  an  estabUshed  cult.  It  was  against  this  one- 
sided development  of  the  concept  of  religion  under 
the  dominance  of  the  law,  that  Jesus  uttered  his 
most  searching  woes.  And  yet,  with  Jesus  there 
is  to  be  noted  the  recognition  that  "these  ought 
ye  to  have  done,   and  not  have  left  the  other 


The  Law  Vindicated  83 

undone,"  even  though  they  include  but  the 
minutiae  of  the  most  developed  ceremonial  code. 
The  law  of  Israel  was  not  all  weakness.  The 
whole  process  of  centralization  and  canonization 
was  one  of  prophetic  purification  of  a  convenient 
instrunient,  a  ready  vehicle  of  religious  truth  and 
expression.  Purged  from  its  cruder  elements,  it 
became  a  custodian  of  vital  truth  and  an  ex- 
pression of  the  religious  consciousness.  Surely 
this  does  not  necessarily  make  life  artificial  and 
religion  formal  and  God  a  stranger  to  the  soul! 
Can  we  not  look  for  evidences  of  a  high  mystical 
piety  under  such  influences.?  That  the  former 
occurs  is  chargeable  to  man's  weakness,  that  the 
latter  is  in  evidence  is  to  the  credit  of  the  legal 
system.  We  are  reminded  of  Montefiore's 
question,  "Are  you  going  to  judge  it  by  its 
sinners  or  its  saints.?"  That  emphasis  upon 
God's  personal  presence  among  his  people  in  the 
daily  rites  of  a  central  sanctuary — that  emphasis 
upon  the  religious  import  of  all  the  details  of  life — 
all  these  things  not  merely  permitted  but  even 
encouraged  a  longing  for  his  approval  and  a  con- 
sciousness of  his  personal  interest  in  his  people, 
which  has  expressed  itself  in  some  of  the  most 
spiritual  songs  of  personal  piety.  We  have  in  the 
hymn  book  of  the  second  temple  treasures  of 
spiritual  aspiration  and  devotion  dear  to  the 
heart  of  true  piety  at  all  times.  We  may  readily 
call  to  mind  some  of  these  mystic  Psalms,  hymns 
of  devout  and  immediate  fellowship  with  Yahweh. 
The  varied  sources  and  the  long  time  represented 


84  Jewish  Ethical  IdealisfJi 

ill  the  Psalter  show  that  legal  religion  did  not  dis- 
courage, but  in  some  hearts  at  least,  developed  a 
lofty  type  of  piety.  Thus,  in  the  sacrificial  and 
ceremonial  cult,  full  of  lower  elements  and  appeal- 
ing to  inferior  motives,  there  was,  nevertheless,  a 
force  laying  hold  of  the  popular  mind  and  con- 
serving the  great  concepts  of  the  prophets  of 
spiritualism.  The  spiritual  idealism  of  the  ethical 
monotheism  of  the  prophets  was  the  leavening 
influence  in  the  inception  and  working  out  of 
the  Priestly  Code,  and  the  Code  thus  inspired 
served  to  conserve  to  legal  Judaism  the  unrivalled 
treasures  committed  to  it,  to  become  the  inheri- 
tance of  Christianity  and  so  of  all  mankind. 

The  Resultant 

In  attempting  to  define  the  resultant  which 
arose  from  the  expression  of  prophetic  idealism  in 
terms  of  priestly  legalism,  we  can  only  summarize 
briefly  the  chief  results  of  our  historical  survey. 
Any  concise  definition  would  prove  to  be  little 
more  than  a  restatement  of  the  problem.  That 
the  resultant  was  a  syncretizing  compromise,  is 
the  briefest  statement  of  results.  The  measure 
of  the  varied  ingredients  is  purely  a  question  of 
fact,  and  largely  a  question  of  time  and  place, 
of  community  and  individual.  In  times  of  dis- 
tress, such  as  the  persecutions  of  Manasseh,  or  the 
Babylonian  exile,  the  faithful  in  Israel  learned 
that  neither  sacred  place  nor  rite  was  essential 
to  the  maintaining  of  a  real  fellowship  with  God. 


The  Law  Vindicated  85 

Thus  arose  the  Deuteronomic  movement  for  the 
limitation  of  the  dangers  inherent  in  local  cults, 
by  the  acceptance  of  one  central  sanctuary  as  the 
exponent  of  all  outward  religious  activity.  In 
the  priestly  legislation,  the  logical  working  out  of 
this  proposition  is  found  in  the  absolute  control 
of  all  public  worship  to  the  exclusion  of  the 
corrupt  and  the  development  of  the  ideal.  That 
the  material  outward  forms,  interpreted  in  terms 
of  the  expedient,  should  assume  the  place  of  the 
essential  is  not  a  necessary  development,  even  if 
a  very  natural  one.  If  an  eifort  to  analyse  and 
explain  the  motives  underlying  the  adoption  of 
this  formulated  system  in  place  of  the  immediate 
and  spontaneous  religious  expression  demanded 
by  the  severe  logic  of  the  prophetic  message, 
ends  only  in  raising  a  question  to  leave  it  un- 
answered, we  need  not  feel  that  nothing  has  been 
done,  and  that  no  gain  has  accrued.  Not  im- 
pertinent is  the  reminder  of  Ruskin,  "you  will 
discover  that  the  thoughts  even  of  the  wisest  are 
very  little  more  than  pertinent  questions.  To 
put  the  difficulty  into  clear  shape,  and  exhibit 
to  you  the  grounds  of  mdecision,  that  is  all  that 
they  can  generally  do  for  you."  If  we  have 
shown  that  there  is  good  ground  for  indecision 
in  trying  to  explain  the  relations  existing  between 
pre-exilic  prophetic  ethical  idealism  and  post- 
exilic  priestly  legalism,  we  shall  have  done  some- 
thing toward  removing  too  widely  accepted  false 
judgments  as  to  the  legal  system  and  its  effects 
upon  Israel. 


86  Jewish  Ethical  Idealism 

Prophetic  idealism  was  not  lost  in  priestly 
legalism,  when  the  religious  customs  of  the  past 
were  systematized  and  authorized  in  the  post- 
exilic  law-book.  But  the  law  became  a  common 
carrier  of  all  the  treasures  of  prophecy,  placing 
them  at  the  door  of  every  man  in  Israel,  carrying 
them  down  the  ages  to  be  deposited  within  the 
storehouse  of  Christian  spirituality.  The  whole 
legal  system,  even  in  its  most  material  symbolism, 
was  dominated  and  inspired  by  prophetic  ethical 
idealism.  There  is  no  better  evidence  of  this  fact 
than  the  power  which  lay  in  the  cult  of  manifesting 
itself  in  lives  of  true  piety.  Legalism  wrought 
out  in  life  belied  the  charge  that  it  was  void  of  all 
spiritual  and  moral  force,  and  showed  that  the 
Jewish  constitution  was  successful  in  its  aim  of 
preserving  and  transmitting  Israel's  religious 
treasures.  It  gave  rise  to  that  mass  of  individ- 
ualistic and  intimate  piety  which  so  permeates 
the  O.  T.  No  better  proof  that  ceremonial 
ritual  did  not  dominate  the  interpretation  of  the 
law  can  be  found  than  in  the  119th  Psalm,  in 
which  there  Is  no  mention  of  the  ceremonies  of 
sacrifice,  purification  or  atonement.  Thus  the 
truly  religious  idealism  of  the  Hebrew  constitution 
burst  through  the  bonds  of  the  practical  fetters  of 
legal  regulations,  and  manifested  Itself  in  the 
hymns  and  lives  of  the  pious  members  of  the 
Jewish  community.  To  this  movement  in  He- 
brew religious  history  Christianity  Is  not  the 
antithesis  but  the  Ideal  culmination.  It  is  not  a 
break  with  the  past,  but  the  seizing  of  the  real 


The  Law  Vindicated  87 


treasure  of  its  origin  and  the  handing  of  it  down 
to  the  future.  Jesus  of  Nazareth  never  broke 
from  the  fellowship  of  his  Father's  house,  but  only 
from  the  fellowship  of  those  who  would  make  that 
house  a  sheltering  den  for  thieves. 

Our  study  has  thus  brought  us  to  the  climax  of  a 
long  course  of  religious  development.  ^  Jastrow 
drops,  by  chance  as  it  were,  a  most  significant 
phrase.  "It  is  this  idealism  issuing  from  the 
direction  taken  by  the  religious  thought  and  by 
the  religious  institutions  of  the  Hebrews  that 
eventually  brings  about  the  wide  departure  from 
Babylonian  and  Assyrian  counterparts,  ^  .  .  ." 
(Jastrow,  Hebrew  and  BabylonianTraditions,  3 18.) 
It  is  "the  direction  taken,"  not  the  stage  but 
the  trend  of  a  movement  which  is  the  vital  factor 
in  the  problem,  the  significant  element  in  the 
process  of  evolution.  The  fundamental  element 
in  our  problem  is  not  so  much  the  moral  and 
spiritual  faultlessness  of  the  priestly  reconstruc- 
tion of  the  post-exilic  community,  but  the  trend 
of  that  movement.  We  have  seen  that  "the 
direction  taken"  by  religious  thought  in  the 
common  institutions  of  sacrificial  ritual  and 
ceremonial  worship  developed  out  of  the  Jewish 
legal  system,  not  a  mere  materialistic  formalism, 
but  a  deeply  spiritual  and  ethical  personal  piety— 
that  out  of  the  threatening  dangers  lurking  in 
priestly  legalism  Judaism  developed  into  Chris- 
tianity, the  highest  type  of  ethical  idealism.  In 
other  words,  there  was  such  a  thing  as  Jewish 
ethical  idealsm,  as  well  as  Jewish  ritual  legalism. 


88  Jewish  Ethical  Idealism 

And  this  Judaism  became  Christianity.  In  Jesus 
the  prophetic  inspiration  found  permanent  ex- 
pression, but  in  the  law  the  prophetic  message 
was  preserved  until  a  better  spokesman  arose. 
Then,  and  only  then,  could  it  say  with  the  last 
great  impersonation  of  the  O.  T.  dispensation, 
John  the  Baptist,  "He  must  increase,  but  I  must 
decrease." 

Have  we  solved  our  problem.^  Who  can  say.^ 
But  we  have  shown  that  the  priceless  jewel  of 
Hebrew  religious  development,  a  pure  ethical 
idealism  of  the  prophets,  was  not  lost  to  the  re- 
ligious experience  of  Israel,  but  was  rather  pre- 
served for  her  and  for  all  ages  and  all  races  through 
the  ritual  legalism  of  the  priests.  The  world's 
richest  treasures  of  religious  and  moral  truth  are 
the  gifts  and  fruitage  of  Jewish  ethical  idealism. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The  following  books  are  full  of  suggestion  for 
the   whole   problem   before   us,    and    have   been 
constantly  used  in  our  study: — 
Budde,  Religion  of  Israel  to  the  Exile. 
Cheyne,  Jewish   Religious   Life  after  the  Exile. 
Jastrow,  Hebrew  and  Babylonian  Traditions. 
Kittel,  Geschichte  des  Volkes  Israels,  2nd  ed. 
Montefiore,  Hibbert  Lectures,  1892  The  Religion 

of  the  Ancient  Hebrews. 
Smend,  Alttestamentliche  Religionsgeschichte. 
Wellhausen,  Prolegomena  zur  Geschichte  Israels 

(History  of  Is.) 

Other  literature  covering  the  wider  problem 
may  be  noted: — 
Addis,  Hebrew  Religion. 
Barton,  Archaeology  of  Holy  Scriptures. 
Benzinger,  Hebraische  Archaologie. 
Cheyne,  Two  Religions. 

Dillmann  (Kittel),  Handbuch  der  Atl.  Theologie. 
Loisy,  Religion  of  Israel. 

McCurdy,  History,  Prophecy  and  the  Monuments 
Smith,  W.  R.,  O.  T.  in  the  Jewish  Church. 

"  "      Religion  of  the  Semites. 

Stade,  Alt.  Geschichte. 

Biblishche  Theologie  des  A.  T. 

Most  of  the  books  mentioned  above  touch 
upon  Prophecy.  Other  valuable  helps  are: — 
Bennett,  Post-exilic  Prophets. 

89 


90  Jewish  Ethical  Idealism 

Cornill,  Der  Israelitische  Prophetismus. 
Davidson,  O.  T.  Prophecy. 
Duhm,  Theologie  der  Propheten. 
Kittel,  Atl.  Wissenschaft. 
KIrkpatrick,  Doctrine  of  the  Prophets. 
Orelli,  O.  T.  Prophecy. 

Smith,  J.  M.  P.,  The  Prophet  and  his  Problems. 
"       W.  R.,  Prophets  of  Israel. 

Mention  need  not  be  made  of  the  standard 
commentaries  and  Bible  Dictionaries,  and  of  the 
recognized  Introductions.     Some  special  studies 
upon  Deuteronomy  are: — 
Puukko,  Deuteronomium. 
Kraetzschmar,  Bundesvorstellung. 

O.  T.  History  is  covered  by  general  works  and 

special  studies,  among  which  we  have  mentioned 

several  already.     We  add: — 

Guthe,  Geschichte  des  Volkes  Israels. 

Kent's  Series  (Especially  the  books  on  the  Per- 
sian and  Jewish  periods). 

Meyer's  Geschichte  (Especially  Die  Entstehung 
des  Judenthums). 

Peters,  Religion  of  the  Hebrews.  (Containing 
a  very  valuable  Bibliography). 

Smith,  H.  P.,  History  of  Israel. 

Note  may  be  made  of  several  miscellaneous 
studies  of  value: — 

Buhl,   Die   Socialen   Verhaltnisse   der   Israeliten. 
Abrahams,  Judaism. 


Bibligraphical  91 


Montgomery,  The  Samaritans. 

Clay,  Bible  in  the  Light  of  Babel. 

Jeremias,   Das  Alte  Testament    im    Lichte   des 

alten  Orients  (The  O.  T.  in  the  Light  of  the 

Ancient  East). 
Monteiiore,    Papers    in    the    Jewish    Quarterly 

Review. 
Herford,  Pharisaism. 


Jewish  Ethical  Idealism 


93 


INDEX 


Ahaz,  19,  23. 

Altars,  10,  33f.;  Heathen,  57; 

see  High  Places. 
Amos,  14,  I5ff.,  23,  42,  54. 
Ark,  46. 
Asherah,  10. 
Assyria,   16,   17,   18,   19,  22, 

46,79. 
Assyrian  Parallels,  52. 
Atonement,  29,  53f.,  70. 

Baal,  15. 

Babylon,  68,  71,  74,  80. 

Babylonia,  63,  67,  79. 

Babylonian,  Captivity,  see 
Exile;  Parallels,  52. 

Babylonians,  41. 

Baruch,  42,  44. 

Bethel,  15,  17,  34. 

Book  of  the  Law,  24,  26,  27, 
29,  31,  36,  38,  40,  41;  see 
Deuteronomy,  Law,  Torah. 

Briggs,  66. 

Canaan,  26,  28,  37. 
Canaanite  Elements,  10,  13, 

14,  24,  33,  78. 
Canaanites,  13. 
Canon,  60. 

Centralization,  33f.,  37  f.,  54f. 
Cheyne,  66. 


Christ,  see  Jesus. 
Christian,  53,  jy,  86. 
Christianity,  42,  53,  64f.,  yy, 

Chronicles,  36. 

Church,  40,  56,  58,  61,  yy,  81. 

Circumcision,  of  the  heart,  49. 

Code,   of   D,    42ff.,   45 f.;   of 

Covenant,    36;   of  Priests, 

58,  60,  62f.,  64,  69ff.,  74f., 
8iff.;  see  Priestly  Code, 
Deuteronomic  Code,  Deu- 
teronomy. 

Cornill,  43f.,  48. 

Covenant,  God,  I5f.;  D's, 
43;  Old  and  New,  45  ff., 
49ff.,  61;  see  Code,  Deu- 
teronomy, etc. 

Cult,  and  Prophet,  24f.;  Pop- 
ular, 31,  32;  of  D,  40;  of  P, 

59; 

Curtis,  36. 
Cyrus,  68. 

Dan,  City,  34. 
David,  15,  41,  79. 
Deutero-Isaiah,  24,  30,  5 iff., 

59,  61. 
Deuteronomic,  Code,  31,  33 

ff.,  4iff.,  58f.,  64;  Reform, 


94 


Jewish  Ethical  Idealism 


26ff.,  54,  85;  see  Book  of 

the  Law. 
Deuteronomy,  26ff.,  esp.,  27, 

28,  3 if.;  see  Deuteronomic 

Code. 
Duhm,  66. 

Edomites,  67. 

Egypt,  50. 

Elijah,  14,  17,  79. 

Elisha,  14. 

Ephraim,  80. 

Ethical,  Yahweh,  i6ff.,  2of., 
22f.,  39. 

Ethics,  and  Cult,  24f.,  35, 
4Sff.,  S5ffM  S8ff.,  73f. 

Exile,  28,  37,  52,  6iflt.;  con- 
ditions in,  6if.;  Jerusalem 
in,  6j^.;  Religion  in,  69f.; 
and  Restoration,  79!?. 

Exiles,  52,  6iif.,  68f. 

Ezekiel,  14,  37,  38,  45,  49ff., 
54,  S5f.,  s8f.,  61. 

Ezra,  27,  61,  68,  7of.,  73f.; 
Book  of,  7ofr.,  73  fF.,  76ff., 
86. 

Foreign  Powers,  57f.,  73 f. 
Formalism,  45f.,  82ff. 

Galilean,  15;  see  Jesus. 
God,    isff.,    i8f.,    22ff.;    see 

Yahweh,  Ethical,  Ethics. 
Gospel.  25. 

Grace,  49,  50.  S2ff.,  ssf. 
Graf,  44. 
Gray,  19. 
Great  Unknown,  54,  55;  see 

Deutero-Isaiah. 


Guilds,  Prophetic,  14,  16. 
Gunkel,  53. 

Haggai,  56f.,  61,  68. 

Harper,  53. 

Hazael,  17. 

Heart,  30,  45,  47f. 

Heathenish  Elements,  31,  39, 
59.69. 

Hebrew  Religion,  etc.,  9,  23, 
29,  41,  42,  46,  48,  51,  61, 
65,  73,  77^  86. 

Hebrews,  9,  23,  33,  41,  62, 
79,  81,  87. 

Hezekiah,  19,  20,  27,  37. 

High-Places,  34,  36;  see  Al- 
tars. 

Holiness,  39,  55f. 

Holy  Scriptures,  38;  sec  Scrip- 
tures. 

Horeb,  50. 

Hosea,  14,  I7f.,  42,  54,  78, 
80. 

Hosts,  16,  17;  see  Yahweh. 

Idealism,  9,  46,  54f.,  56,  73f., 

84ff. 
Idolatry,  27,  43. 
Images,  etc.,  see  Symbols. 
Individualism,   30,  45,  47^., 

57,  64,  74,  86. 
Isaiah,   14,   i8f.,  20,  23,  24, 

27,  39,  42,  44,  46,  54,  66; 

see  Deutero-Isaiah. 
Isolation  of  Exiles,  62. 
Israel,  9,  etc.,  a  general  term 

used    frequently    for    the 

Hebrew  people  during  the 

period    of    their    national 

history. 


Jewish  Ethical  Idealism 


95 


Jastrow,  87. 

Jehoiachin,  62. 

Jehovah,  23,  35;  see  Yahweh. 

Jeremiah,  14,  19,  23,  24,  27, 

28,  29ff.,  35,38,  4iff-,4SffM 

49,  50.  54,  59.  64,  66,  67, 

80. 
Jeroboam,  15. 
Jerusalem,  9,  10,  20,  28,  34, 

36,  37,  38,  41,  42,  43,  46, 

54,  57,  6if.,  67ff.,  71,  74, 

79,  80. 
Jesus,  15,  27,  29,  35,  39,  76f., 

79,  82f.,  87f.;  see  Galilean, 

Nazareth. 
Jewish,  27,  59,  69,  86,  87,  88. 
Jews,  63,  66,  67,  76. 
Job,  30. 

John,  ist  Epistle,  29. 
John  the  Baptist,  88. 
Josiah,  28f.,  31,  32,  35,  36f. 
Judaean,  78;  Judaic,  76. 
Judah,  25,  31,  38,  42,  43,  61, 

67,  79,  80. 
Judaism,  40,  42,  53,  55,  56, 

60,  62,  64,  67,  69,  70,  73, 

74,  76,  77,  81,  84,  87. 
Judges,  37. 
Judgment,  I5f. 

Kemosh,  16. 

Kipg,  56. 

Kings,  Book  of,  32. 

Law,  9,  43,  75,  76ff.,  esp., 
8iff.;  Christ  and,  76f.,  82f.; 
and  Christianity,  76f.,  82f., 
84ff.;     Strength     of,     83; 


Weakness  of,  82;  see  Book 

of,  Torah. 
Legalism,    9,    23f.,    38f.,    40, 

42flF.,   45f.,    56,   64f.,    72f., 

76flF.,  86flF.;  see  Law. 
Levites,  35,  63. 
Levitical,  35. 
Love  of  God,  I7f.,  78. 

Malachi,  57f.,  61. 

Manasseh,  28f.,  32f.,  39,  84. 

Messianic,  51,  56. 

Micah,  I9f.,  28,42. 

Moab,  16. 

Moabites,  67. 

Monotheism,  i6f.,  i8f.,  23,  27, 

78,  84. 
Montefiore,  53,  83. 
Moses,  10,  50,  60. 
Mount      Sinai,      see      Sinai; 

Mount  Zion,  see  Zion. 
Mystic  Elements,  83f.,  86f. 

Name  of  Yahweh,  50,  60. 
Nazareth,  29,  35;  see  Jesus. 
Nebuchadnezzar,  67. 
Nehemiah,  27,  61,  68,  7ofF. 

Particularism,  56f.,  69. 
Passover,  37. 
Patriotism,  2of. 
Paul,  27;  Pauline,  49. 
Persian,  63,  73,  81. 
Pharisaic,  57,  76,  77,  82. 
Pillars,  10. 
Prayer,  65. 
Priest,  9,  10,  34f.,  55f. 


96 


Jewish  Ethical  Idealism 


Priestly  Code,  24,  27,  6(){., 
75,  8iff.,  84;  P,  35,  38;  see 
Torah,  Law. 

Prince,  56. 

Prophecy,  Ch.  1.,  59;  and 
Christianity,  6\{.\  Failure, 
46;  Full  Tide,  hIT.,  Origin, 
I3f.;  Patriotic  vs.  Ethical, 
2of.;  Prophetic  Reaction 
Against  D,  45  ff.;  Prophetic 
Struggle,  77ff.;  see  Prophet. 

Prophet,  9,  I3ff.;  Failure,  46; 
Guilds,  14,  16;  Writing,  14; 
Eighth  century,  15;  False, 
21;  see  Prophecy. 

Psalter,  66f.,  83 f. 

Psalms,  30,  86;  Mystic,  83. 

Rabbinical,  77. 

Reconstruction,  Ch.  IV.,  esp., 
69ff. 

Reforms,  27,  29,  36. 

Religion,  9;  Popular,  I5f., 
24f.,  26,  28f.,  32ff.,  39f., 
44;  Priestly,  Ch.  IV,  esp., 
69!?;  Sum  of  Prophetic, 
77ff. 

Repentance,  20, 

Restoration,  60,  79ff. 

Ritual,  45f.,  54!,  57. 

Ruskin,  85. 

Sabbath,  65. 
Sacrifice,  10,  29,  53f.,  Sj. 
Samaria,  17,  28,  79. 
Samaritan  Schism,  69. 
Samuel,  13,  14,  15. 
Scribe,  43,  60. 


Scripture,  38,  65;  cf.  60;  see 

Holy  Scriptures. 
Seer,  I3f. 
Semitic  Religion,  9f.,  24f.,  26, 

39- 
Sensual  Elements,  10,  34,  39. 
Servant  of  Yahweh,  29,  5 iff., 

55;  see  Suffering. 
Shiloh,  34,  46. 

Sin,  29,  30,  31,  45,  46,  47,  62. 
Sinai,  31,  48. 
Smend,  19. 
Smith,  G.  A.,  29,  36. 
Social  Problems,  20,  22,  27, 

41,45,49,58,71. 
Sodom,  53. 
Solomon,  15. 
Spirit,  19,  79. 
Spiritual    Elements,    49,    53, 

57,  61,  63,  72ff.,  78f. 
Spirituality,    42,    64ff.,    72f., 

75- 

Stade,  64f. 

State,  56,  81. 

Suffering,  from  God,  16;  for 
atonement,  29f.,  5 iff. 

Suffering  Servant,  see  Serv- 
ant of  Yahweh. 

Symbols,  33f. 

Synagogue,  65f. 

Syncretism,  54ff.,  58,  84;  cf. 
63  f.,  69f.,  72f. 

Temple,  9,  27,   32,  4if.,  44f., 

46,  54,  56,  57.  79- 
Torah,  42,  48,  60;  see  Law, 

Codes,  Deuteronomy. 
Trespass  Offering,  53. 


Jewish  Ethical  Idealism  gy 


Trito-Isaiah,  6i.  Yahweh,  God  of  Moses,  lo; 

God  of  Hosts,    i6;  Name 
Universalism,  69.  constantly   occurring;    See 

God,  Hosts,  Spirit , Ethical. 
Vicarious,  53f. 

Zechariah,  56f, ,  61,  68. 
Wellhausen,  60.  Zion,  46,  63,  80. 

Will  and  Heart,  48f. 


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